The Doctor and the Wolf
by Tamara Reuveni
Summary: When Rose Tyler looks into the Time Vortex she discovers that she is really a Time Lady known as the Wolf exiled to Earth for the crime of treason. Can the Doctor find a way to change her back before her reawakened consciousness kills her human body? (Season 2 rewrite. Lots of Rose/Ten shipping, you have been warned.)
1. Waking the Wolf

_A/N_ _\- If you want to know what the Wolf looks like in the flashback scene, visit my Pinterest board for this story. My username is my actual name, Tamara Reuveni, and the board is called The Doctor and the Wolf. Very easy to remember._

* * *

Chapter One \- Waking the Wolf

"Faster!" Rose yelled.

Outside she could hear Mickey revving the truck's engines and smell burning rubber. The chain was pulled taut, but it was holding.

"Come on, come on," Rose muttered, her hands clenched into fists. "Come on, please, please, please."

And then the bolts snapped, and the console cracked open. Golden light spilled out, coiling and dancing in the air like something alive. And just like in Cardiff, Rose heard the heart of the universe singing inside her head, an achingly familiar song like a lullaby from her childhood. This time she didn't look away. She stared into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS stared back.

She didn't hear her mum and Mickey banging on the door, asking if she was all right. All she could hear was the song.

 _Hello, Wolf,_ it hummed happily. _I've been waiting for you._

~o0o~

 _She stood alone at the center of the Hall of Judgment. The Tribunal looked down upon her from their thrones. On the balconies above, almost all the Time Lords and Ladies were assembled, awaiting the verdict. On some faces she saw disdain, on others pity, but none gave her hope._

 _The Tribunal finished its deliberations, and the Secretary stood up. "This court," he announced, his voice carrying to every corner of the cavernous room, "finds the Time Lady known as the Wolf guilty of treason and dereliction of duty. Before the sentence is passed, is there anyone here who would speak on her behalf?"_

 _The Hall was silent. She hadn't really expected anything else. There were many on Gallifrey to whom she was a hero, but none of them were here. The Tribunal had made sure of that._

 _She looked up at her judges. "May I speak?" she asked humbly._

 _The man in the highest throne who was known as the Teacher stood up, his cold eyes glittering with triumph. "Do you wish to recant your treason and take up arms in defense of Gallifrey again?"_

 _"No. I just want to say…" She raised her voice so they could hear her on the balconies. "You're pathetic! Call yourselves lords of time? You're not even people anymore. You started this war with your arrogance and your greed, and now you hide in your glass tower and watch while real people get slaughtered. And you accuse me of betraying Gallifrey? The Daleks aren't half the monsters that you are!"_

 _She thought she saw the Teacher's jaw twitch in anger, but all he said was, "Are you quite finished?"_

 _"Oh, yeah." She waved a hand airily. "Sentence away."_

 _He resumed his seat and gestured for the Secretary to continue._

 _"By unanimous agreement," the Secretary announced, "the Tribunal sentences the Time Lady known as the Wolf to death. The method of execution shall be Mortality."_

 _Her courage faltered. It was probably the kindest method of execution in the galaxy, but it was still dying. Her memories would be wiped. She would forget Gallifrey, her friends, her family, her whole life. Then her consciousness would be transferred into a primitive form, one with no ability to regenerate. There she would exist for the duration of the body's life span and die with it, but she would be someone else. The Wolf would be gone._

~o0o~

The Wolf looked into the Time Vortex with human eyes and remembered everything.

She remembered Gallifrey and three hundred years of love and loss, joy and pain. And she remembered her life on Earth, her mum and Mickey and going shopping with Shareen and eating chips and watching telly and doing a hundred normal things and never knowing why she couldn't be happy with that life like everyone else was.

But clearest of all, she remembered the Doctor, her wonderful Doctor who had shown her the universe.

She was Rose Tyler and she was the Wolf, and right now she had to save the Doctor.

~o0o~

"What are you? Coward or killer?"

The man known as the Doctor looked down at the device beneath his hands and remembered another day, long ago and still to come, and another weapon, a weapon powerful enough to end an endless war, but at a terrible cost. He'd made his choice that day, and he'd regretted it every day since. He couldn't change that moment, but he could still change this one.

He stepped back from the delta wave device. "Coward," he said softly but clearly. "Any day."

The Emperor regarded him from the holo-screen. The Doctor thought it looked disappointed. "The human race will be harvested because of your weakness," it said.

"And what about me?" he asked, trying not to sound like a scared little kid. "Will I become one of your angels?"

"You are the heathen! You will be exterminated!"

He felt a wave of relief so strong it made him weak at the knees. At least he would escape that fate. As someone once said, death was but the next great adventure, and he'd always loved an adventure. He stood up a little straighter. "Maybe it's time." At least Rose was safe. He held onto that thought as the Daleks closed in. Rose would live.

He closed his eyes and waited for the end. But it never came. Instead he heard an oh so familiar wheezing, groaning noise.

A faint memory - _"It brings hope to anyone who hears it, no matter how lost. Even you, Doctor."_ Rose had said that to him once. Or someone who looked like Rose.

He kept his eyes closed, certain he was imagining it because it was the sound he most wanted to hear in all the universe.

Then the Daleks began to shout in alarm. "TARDIS materializing! TARDIS materializing!"

He spun around and there she was, his sexy little spaceship, blue as blue could be. But his momentary joy was quickly drowned by terror because if she was here, that meant…

The doors opened and out stepped Rose Tyler. But there was something very wrong about her. At first the Doctor didn't understand what he was seeing. She had absorbed the Time Vortex; he could sense that right away, but it should have been burning her up from the inside. She should have been glowing like a supernova. Instead there was just a faint golden mist clinging to her skin.

"Rose?" he said warily, taking a step toward her.

She looked at him, and her eyes were Rose's eyes. Perhaps a touch of gold in her irises, but still full of Rose's humor and compassion and love, love for him, for her Doctor. He reached out to her with his mind, and in an instant he understood. A Time Lord. There was a Time Lord in Rose's head, holding back the Vortex, controlling it.

He staggered back a step. It had been so long since he'd felt the mind of another Time Lord, he'd almost forgotten how it felt. _Who are you?_ he asked silently.

 _I am the Wolf_ , she replied. It was definitely a she.

He tried to remember if he'd ever heard of a Time Lady called the Wolf, but it didn't sound familiar. A part of him wanted to laugh with joy. He wasn't the last one. He wasn't alone in the universe. But a much larger and less selfish part of him asked, _How long have you been inside her?_ How much damage had this Wolf done to his Rose?

 _Since before she was born. For the crime of treason, the Tribunal sentenced me to death by mortality. They placed my dormant consciousness in a human fetus still in its mother's womb. As the child grew, her mind became interwined with mine. We were one and the same before we took our first breath. When I looked into the heart of the TARDIS, it awakened the dormant part of my consciousness, and I remembered._

The whole exchange passed in less than a blink, and then the mind of the Wolf withdrew just as the Daleks began to recover from their confusion.

Cries of "Exterminate!" filled the Gamestation control room. A beam of light shot past the Doctor, aimed directly at the Wolf. Before he could even cry out, she raised her hand and dissipated the beam harmlessly. She turned a cold glare on the Emperor, and the Doctor felt a surge of hope because that look was pure Rose Tyler. She was still in there somewhere.

"I'll deal with you in a minute," she told the Dalek ruler. "But first…" She turned away from the holo-screen. "I have to send myself a message."

The Doctor followed her gaze and saw the great metal letters spelling out Bad Wolf Corporation above the doors of the lift. She waved her hands and the first two words disappeared.

"What've you done?" he asked.

"Sent the words into the Vortex, scattered them across the universe to lead me back here."

"But why?" he demanded. "Why did you come back?" He could guess why Rose had looked into the Vortex in the first place. She had thought she could save him if she could just convince the TARDIS to take her back. But once the Wolf awakened and found herself free and in possession of a fully functioning TARDIS, why had she come here of all the places and times in the universe.

She looked at him as though he'd asked why birds flew or suns burned. "I want you safe," she said. "My Doctor." Then she turned back to the Emperor.

It quailed a little under her gaze, but it said defiantly, "You cannot hurt me."

She grinned, and for a moment she looked exactly like a hungry wolf. "Wanna bet?"

"I am immortal!" the Emperor said, but it no longer sounded sure.

"You are tiny," she said disdainfully. "I can see every atom of your existence, and I divide them." She raised her hands, and all around them Daleks began crumbling into dust. "Everything that lives can die. Even you."

The Doctor watched in dismay as his beautiful Rose turned into a vengeful god before his eyes. She was glowing brighter now, losing control. The power was consuming her.

On the holo-screen, the Dalek ships exploded into atoms and drifted away into the dark, the Emperor's final cries of "I cannot die!" silenced at last.

"Rose!" he called to her. When she didn't turn, he said, "Wolf!"

She looked at him, her eyes shining like Christmas lights.

"It's done. We're safe. You can stop now."

"But I could do so much more," she protested. "So much good. I can bring life."

Several decks below them, he felt something new awaken, something that should never have been. _Oh, Rose. What have you done?_

"No," he pleaded. "Your body's still human. You're going to burn if you don't let it go."

Even as he said it, she realized it was true. There'd been a growing pain in her head for several minutes now. She tried to release the Vortex back into the TARDIS, but it wouldn't go. She cried out, clutching her head. "Doctor, I can't … I can't get rid of it."

He caught her as she fell, gathering her in his arms. "I've got you," he murmured, stroking her hair. "It's okay. I've got you."

"Doctor," she sobbed. "It hurts. Oh, my head."

He looked at her and knew what he had to do. He leaned down and kissed her.

The Vortex burned like a thousand suns as it passed into him, and even so the feel of her lips against his was intoxicating. When the transfer was complete, he took a deep breath and blew the energy back into the TARDIS. He looked into her eyes, searching for any traces of gold. There were none. She was herself again, though he wasn't sure he knew who that was anymore.

She looked up at him, dreamy and unfocused. He wondered how much of this she would remember. "All better," he said, but he knew it wasn't by a long way. She had a fully awakened Time Lord consciousness in a human brain. They would have to deal with that sooner or later.

She gave him a sleepy smile. "Thanks to my Doctor," she said and slipped into unconsciousness.

He carried her into the TARDIS and laid her gently on the floor. He could sense the newly resurrected Jack running toward them, time distorting around him. He considered waiting, but a Time Lord-Human hybrid was going to make life complicated enough without adding a walking, talking, flirting paradox into the mix. Jack would survive. He would have no choice.

~o0o~

Rose woke up in the TARDIS. The Doctor was standing at the console, his back to her. She sat up, rubbing her head. "What happened?"

He turned toward her, and something in his face terrified her but she couldn't say what it was. "Which one are you now?" he asked. "Am I talking to Rose Tyler or the Wolf?"

She sighed. So he was going to be like that. "I told you, Doctor," she said, getting to her feet, "I'm not two people. I'm one person who temporarily mislaid about three hundred years worth of memories. Rose Tyler has always been the Wolf, and the Wolf will never completely stop being Rose Tyler no matter what happens from now on." She moved closer to him, trying to pinpoint that strange, terrifying something she could feel. Her senses were so dull in this body. "Do you believe me?" she asked.

After a pause that felt like a lifetime, he said, "Yeah. I believe you."

She sighed with relief. "Good." She looked around, suddenly noticing who wasn't there. "Where's Jack?"

"He's gone."

She looked at him suspiciously. "What do you mean 'gone'? Why didn't he come with us?"

He refused to meet her eyes as he said, "He died, Rose. The Daleks killed him."

She gasped. "No. Oh my God." Not Jack. Jack couldn't die. He was … he was Jack. He was a force of nature. The man who could flirt with a homicidal robot or sell snow to an Eskimo. The man who'd danced with her on the roof of an invisible spaceship in the middle of the London Blitz. He couldn't be gone just like that. But even as her mind refused to accept it, part of her -the part that remembered living through the Time War - knew the inescapable truth. Everything that lived could die.

She looked at the Doctor. "You're dying." It wasn't a question. That was what she'd sensed as soon she woke up.

He gave her a sad smile. "Fraid so."

"Because of me. You pulled the Vortex out of me."

"Had to. It was killing you."

"Can you regenerate?"

"What do you think I'm doing right now?"

She put a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob. "I'm sorry," she mumbled through her fingers. "I wanted to save you, and now you have to use up one of your regenerations to save me."

"Oh, don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I've been waiting for a chance to get rid of this daft old face since the first time I looked in a mirror."

She smiled weakly. "I like your daft face."

He smiled back, the first real smile he'd given her since he sent her back home. "Listen, Rose. I don't have much time. I need to make you a promise, only I don't know who I'll be five minutes from now, so if I don't remember or I don't care, you have to make me keep my promise. Do whatever it takes. Don't let me break my promise. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"Good. I promise you, Rose Tyler the Wolf, that I will find a way to change you back into a Time Lady. I will search the universe over and I won't stop until I find a way to put you right again. Don't let me forget it."

She stared at him with wide eyes. She'd hardly dared to think that far ahead, let alone dream that it was possible. "I won't," she promised him in return.

Suddenly, he doubled over in pain. She wanted to run to him and hold him, but she knew it was too dangerous. The regeneration had taken hold of him completely. If she interfered with the process, he could die. She clung to one of the pillars of the TARDIS and prayed that he would remember his promise and care about her enough to keep it because if she had learned one thing about him during their travels it was that no one made the Doctor do anything he didn't want to do.

The energy poured off him, so bright she could barely see him, and then it slowly began to fade, and there was a new man standing in front of her. A man with messy hair and a considerably smaller nose. His beloved leather jacket hung on him like a circus tent.

"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. His Northern accent was gone too, replaced by something similar to her own pattern of speech. Then he stopped, distracted, and began running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "New teeth," he muttered to himself. "That's weird." He refocused on her. "Where were we?"

Rose held her breath.

"Oh, right." He grinned. "Changing you back into the Big Bad Wolf.


	2. Home For Christmas

_A/N \- Can't promise I'll always be this quick about updates, but the inspiration just kept flowing. I've always had problems with The Christmas Invasion, starting with Rose going all damsel in distress and not doing anything useful. At first it's going to seem like I haven't changed that, but she's just having a bit of an identity crisis. She'll get over it by the end of the chapter, and in part two she's gonna really start kicking ass. So bear with me._

 _Thank you to Lena "Slipstream" Oxton for the encouragement and some great advice._

* * *

Chapter Two \- Home For Christmas

Of course it wasn't that simple.

After taking the TARDIS back to Earth just a few weeks after Rose had left so she could stop her mum worrying, he promptly collapsed on the pavement in front of a very confused Jacquie Tyler and Mickey Smith. Mickey helped Rose carry him up to the flat while Rose tried to explain that this comatose stranger was really the Doctor. She was very glad she'd gotten her memories back before this happened or she would have been as confused as them.

Jacquie produced a pair of men's pajamas from a drawer (Rose decided not to ask) and a stethoscope she'd borrowed from a neighbor who was in medical school. Rose nearly cried when she heard the steady double rhythm of his heartbeats. She'd heard of regenerations gone horribly wrong, and when he'd just collapsed like that...

"Shouldn't we take him to a hospital or something?" Jacquie asked. She was hovering anxiously beside the bed.

"What good would that do?" Rose said, putting the stethoscope in the nightstand and tucking the blankets up around the sleeping Time Lord. "One brain scan and they'd lock him up. Probably dissect him."

"But-"

"Just leave him alone." She gave her mother a severe look. "I mean it. He needs rest."

"All right. All right," Jacquie grumbled.

Satisfied that the Doctor was safe from curious humans, Rose went down the hall to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.

It felt surreal being back here. Of course she'd been here only a few hours ago from her relative point of view, but in those short hours she'd lived a lifetime, or rather relived it as three hundred years of memories came flooding back. On the Gamestation with the Vortex burning inside her head, she'd been the Wolf again, and Rose Tyler was was like a game of make believe, a story she'd been telling herself to make her exile more bearable. But now the story had come alive around her. There was the sofa where she'd watched soaps with her mum and football with Mickey. There was her room with her favorite fuzzy pink blanket, the one she'd had since she was a baby, still on the bed. It was all real and familiar, but alien at the same time. Despite what she'd told the Doctor, she felt like trwo people living in the same skin. And it was getting crowded.

Jacquie came into the kitchen just as the kettle boiled, and Rose braced herself for a barrage of questions. She was not disappointed.

"How can he go changing his face?"

"He just can," she said wearily as she poured hot water over her tea bag and inhaled the fragrant steam.

"But is it just a different face or is he a different person?"

"I don't know. We didn't really get a chance to chat before he passed out." She knew that regeneration often caused personality changes. She just hoped he would still let her travel with him because, human or not, she couldn't stay here.

Jacquie was giving her a strange look. "Something's different about you."

Rose's heart skipped a beat. This wasn't a conversation she was ready to have. "I'm just tired."

"No. It's like ... like you've got more energy."

Rose was saved from having to find an answer by a familiar voice coming from the front room. Confused, she poked her head around the corner and saw the face to match the voice on the television screen. Harriet Jones was giving a press conference.

"She's prime minister now," Jacquie said fondly. "I'm eighteen quid a week better off. They're calling it Britain's Golden Age. I keep telling everyone my Rose has met her."

"Did more than that," Rose said, a faint smile coming to her face despite her worry. "Stopped World War Three with her."

A reporter in the audience asked something about a space probe project called Guinevere One. Apparently he didn't think it was a good use of government money. Harriet practically pounced on him, defending the project fiercely but politely. Same old Harriet Jones.

The program switched to an interview with a nervous little man who, according to the captions, was the manager of the Guinevere One project. He said something poetic about space exploration and the spirit of Christmas, but it sounded trite beside Harriet's impassioned words.

"Is it almost Christmas?" Rose asked, surprise. There'd been a chill in the air when she came back on her own, but she'd been too preoccupied with getting back to the Doctor to look at a calendar.

"It's Christmas Eve," Jacquie said.

Rose looked around the room. "You don't have a tree." They'd always had a tree. There were years when they were just a few pounds away from homeless, but Jacquie still found the money for a Christmas tree.

Now she just shrugged. "Didn't see the point if it was just gonna be me."

She said it casually, but Rose heard the sadness in her voice, and she turned and hugged her mother tightly. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I keep leaving you alone and making you worry. I don't mean to. I just..." _I just don't know how to live in your world, she wanted to say. I just can't be happy here, and now I finally know why, and one day soon I'm going to have to tell you and it will break your heart and I'm so so sorry._

"I know," Jacquie said, patting her cheek. "I know you don't mean to. It's always been this way with you. Even when you were a little girl, it was like you were just waiting for someone to take you away from here and show you the world." She glanced toward the closed bedroom door. "And then he did."

At that moment, the front door opened and Mickey came in. "I've got some last minute Christmas shopping to do," he said. "Want to come, Rose? Bet you haven't gotten my present yet." He grinned teasingly.

"Go on," Jacquie said, giving her a little push toward the door. "Have some fun. I'll look after your alien."

Outnumbered, Rose relented. One last Christmas with her human family before everything changed.

~o0o~

An hour later, she and Mickey were hiding behind a kiosk while robot Santa Clauses tried to kill them with flamethrowers disguised as trumpets.

"I can't even go shopping with you," Mickey muttered. "We get attacked by a brass band."

But Rose wasn't listening. How had she not spotted them? She should have been able to tell a robot from a living creature a mile off. Her senses were so dull in this body.

"It's not us they're after," she said. "It's the Doctor." And he was defenseless, weak and alone and it was her fault. "We've got to get back."

By sheer luck they managed to dodge the flames and made it around the corner where they jumped in a cab. "The Powell Estate," Rose told the driver. "Quickly." She pulled out her mobile and dialed the landline at the flat. She had to warn her mum. Who knew how many of those things there were, or how fast they could move.

She got a busy signal. Jacquie was on the phone as usual. With a groan of frustration, Rose hung up.

"What do those things want with the Doctor?" Mickey asked.

"I don't know," she snapped. "To kill him, capture him, eat him for Christmas dinner. I don't know!"

"But what are they?"

"What part of 'I don't know' are you not getting?"

"You've never seen them before? In your..." He glanced at the driver who was eavesdropping openly. "...travels?"

"No, Mickey! I have seen ghosts and monsters and talking trees and dead people walking, but I have never seen robot Santas with flamethrowers!" She knew it wasn't his fault, but she was scared and lonely and it felt really good to yell.

The cab jerked to a stop outside the estate. She handed the driver a twenty pound note and told him to keep the change. He just looked glad to see the back of them.

When they burst through the door of the flat, sure enough, Jacquie was on the phone. Rose grabbed it away from her and unceremoniously hung up. "Mum, we need to go," she said over Jacquie's outraged protests.

"Go where?"

"To the TARDIS. We need to take the Doctor and get as far away from here as we can. Something's looking for him, something not good."

"Can you fly the TARDIS?" Mickey asked.

"I think so."

"You think so?" He didn't sound encouraged.

"What are you two on about?" Jacquie demanded. "It's Christmas. I'm not going rocketing off in that bloody spaceship on Christmas."

"Don't argue!" Rose said, and suddenly it was the voice of the Wolf coming out of her mouth again, a voice that had commanded troops in battle. "Get to the TARDIS. Don't look back. Don't talk to anyone, especially if they're dressed up like Santa. Mickey, help me carry the Doctor." She turned away, not waiting to see if they would obey.

As she passed through the front room, she noticed something that hadn't been there before. "Mum," she called over her shoulder. "Where did this tree come from?"

"I thought it was you," Jacquie said.

"What do you mean? How could it be me?" She had a very bad feeling.

"Well, you went shopping and then there was a ring at the door. I thought you'd had it delivered."

"Who delivered it?" Rose asked, now backing away from the innocent looking evergreen.

"Some bloke in a Santa suit. Didn't get a good look at his face. Oh!" Jacquie exclaimed in surprise.

The Christmas tree was rising off the floor and spinning, gently at first, then faster and faster until it was a blur. It bumped the corner of the coffee table, and the wood splintered as though the tree had taken a bite out of it. Rose suddenly had a very clear image of what it could do to human flesh.

"Run!" she shouted, grabbing her mother's hand and dragging her down the hall towards the bedroom. She had no idea what she was going to do when they got there, but it would not include dying.

 _I am the Wolf,_ she thought furiously. _I am three hundred and nineteen years old. I survived the Time War, I held the Vortex in my head, and not six hours ago I killed the bloody Emperor of the bloody Daleks. I am not going to die by Christmas tree. It's just too ridiculous._

Mickey tried to hold the thing off with a chair, but the tree chewed through it like some mad woodchuck coming off a month long fast. He dropped the chair, or what was left of it, and ran into the bedroom with Rose and Jacquie. They slammed the door and locked it. In the bed, the Doctor slept on, oblivious to Jacquie's hysterical sobbing and the sinister buzzing of the tree outside.

Rose grabbed his leather jacket off the bedpost and rummaged through its pockets for anything that might help them. She found his psychic paper (she doubted the tree could read) and his sonic screwdriver.

The tree was chewing through the door now. She pointed the screwdriver and pressed buttons at random. Nothing happened.

"Don't you know how to work that thing?" Mickey yelled over the sound of their last defense turning to sawdust.

"No!" It wasn't Time Lord technology. It was his own invention, and she'd never gotten the hang of it.

Jacquie was now huddled in a corner, her hands over her head, her screams reaching hypersonic pitch. Desperate and trapped, Rose did the only thing she could think of. She shoved the screwdriver into the Doctor's hand and reached out to him with her mind.

It was hard, but she finally broke through. _Help me,_ she called to him as loud as she could.

As though she'd flipped a switch in his brain, he sat up and opened his eyes, raised the hand holding the screwdriver, and pressed a button. The tree exploded in a cloud of pine needles and smoke.

"Remote control," he said as though answering a question. "But who's controlling it?" Without waiting for an answer, he kicked off the blankets and walked out of the room.

Jacquie got up off the floor, still looking pale. "Is that it then?" she asked in a shaky voice. "Is he better?"

Rose shrugged and followed the Doctor. Somehow she didn't think it was going to be that simple. Nothing ever was with him.

He walked out the front door and stood at the balcony railing. In the courtyard below were three robot Santas, their strange painted faces turned upward, watching him. One of them was holding what looked like a remote control device.

In complete silence, the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver again, but this time he didn't bother to turn it on. He just pointed it at them. They all simultaneously took a step back, then vanished, leaving nothing but a faint blue glow that Rose recognized as residual energy from a teleport.

"What kind of rubbish aliens are they?" Mickey scoffed. "Scared off by a screwdriver?"

"Pilot fish," the Doctor said. And then he doubled over in pain.

Rose caught him before he fell. "Doctor?" she said. "Doctor, what's wrong?"

His face was contorted with agony, his breath hissing between clenched teeth. "I'm still regenerating," he gasped. "That's what drew the pilot fish here. I need..." He groaned. "I need more time."

"All right. Let's get you back to bed." She tried to help him up, but he shook his head.

"No. Wait. The pilot fish. They're not alone. They're just scavengers, and if they're here that means something...something else is coming. Something worse."

Her stomach clenched. "What is it? What's coming?"

"I don't know. Oh, my head. You woke me up too soon." His grip on her arm slackened, and he seemed about to pass out again.

"Doctor?" she said, starting to panic. "Doctor, stay with me. What's coming?"

He looked at her, and for a moment he was her Doctor again. The eyes were a different color, but the expression in them was the same. "I'm sorry, Rose. I'm too weak. It's up to you."

"But...but I can't do this without you," she pleaded. "I'm just..." _I'm just human._

He seemed to know what she wasn't saying, and he smiled through the pain. "Yes, you can." His fingers brushed her cheek, and for a moment his mind touched hers, giving her strength, letting her feel his trust. "You're the Big Bad Wolf. You can do anything. Save the world, Rose Tyler. One more time."

~o0o~

They carried him back to the bedroom which now had a Christmas tree shaped hole in the door. He was feverish and shaking, and worst of all, one heart had gone silent. Rose gently wiped the sweat from his face, her own heart twisting with guilt. She shouldn't have woken him up. She should have dealt with things on her own, figured it out. She felt so weak, so slow, and now something worse was coming and she had to handle it, she who couldn't even fight off a bloody Christmas tree, and if he woke up to find the Earth destroyed or conquered he would probably never speak to her again and it would serve her right.

As soon as she came out of the bedroom, Jacquie pounced. "What did he mean about the Big Bad Wolf? Why did he call you that?"

"It's nothing," Rose said, collapsing onto the sofa. "It's...like a nickname. Just a joke."

God, what she wouldn't give for some sleep. She hadn't slept since before the Gamestation. Quiz shows, Daleks, all of time and space inside her head, and now homicidal trees. It had been one hell of a day. She wished Jack was here. He probably wouldn't know what to do any better than she did, but at least she wouldn't feel so alone.

"Pilot fish," Mickey said suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. He was looking at something on his laptop.

"Oh, not you too," Jacquie grumbled. "What the hell are pilot fish, and what do they have to do with any of this?" She waved her hands to indicate that by "this" she meant the whole mad world.

Curious, Rose got up and went to look over Mickey's shoulder. He was watching a video of a little fish swimming in deep water. So pilot fish wasn't what the robots were actually called. It was one of the Doctor's metaphors.

"They're scavengers like the Doctor said," Mickey explained. "But they swim alongside the big fish."

"How big?"

"Great big sharks."

Rose sighed. She could think of any number of things out there in the universe that were equivalent to sharks. "How long have we got?" she asked, really just thinking out loud.

"A few hours at most," Mickey said. "The little fish don't swim far from the daddy."

~o0o~

When the inane chatter from the TV and Jacquie's worried looks finally got on her nerves, Rose went back to the bedroom. she curled up on top of the blankets beside the Doctor and held his hand.

She remembered climbing in bed with her mum when she was small. She'd had terrible nightmares - memories, she realized now, trying to resurface. But her mum was always there to hold her and sing her back to sleep. It was Beatles songs mostly and the occasional folk song. Jacquie never knew all the words, but she'd hum the tune or make up silly rhymes to replace the missing lyrics, and Rose would giggle and forget her terror, safe in her mother's arms. She wondered if this was just another nightmare, if she was going to wake up and find that she was still six years old and completely human after all.

She slept. When she woke it was almost midnight. The Doctor still lay beside her, but he'd stopped trembling and his color looked better. She grabbed the stethoscope off the nightstand and checked his hearts. Both beating again, a bit slow but steady.

Someone had left a cup of tea on the nightstand. Probably Jacquie. Tea was her solution to everything. It was cold, but Rose gulped it down anyway, and the sugar and caffeine combined with the meager few hours of sleep to make her feel refreshed, at least for the moment.

She combed her fingers through her hair and went back out to the front room. Jacquie and Mickey were still awake, watching the late news. The announcer was talking about that space probe again. It had reached Mars and was about to start transmitting pictures of the planet's surface.

"How is he?" Jacquie asked.

"Bit better. I think he's out of the woods. Wish I could say the same for us."

"Maybe he was wrong," Mickey said hopefully. "Maybe the pilot fish were on their own this time. Maybe they just got lost."

"Yeah. Maybe," Rose said without much conviction.

"Funny sort of rocks," Jacquie said, peering at the television screen.

Rose turned to see what she was talking about and nearly jumped out of her skin. The news program was showing a grainy photo of what was presumed to be the surface of Mars. Until it opened its mouth and roared.

Jacquie shrieked.

Mickey nearly fell off the sofa.

Rose burst out laughing.

Jacquie and Mickey looked at her as though she'd gone mad. "What's so funny?" Jacquie demanded. "That was an alien. Don't try to tell me it was a hoax. That was a real proper alien."

"Yeah, it was," Rose agreed, still giggling. "And you know what? The Doctor was right. I think I can handle this one on my own." She felt as though a weight had been lifted. For the first time that day, she knew what to do. She grabbed a jacket and headed for the door.

"Oi! Where do you think you're going?" Jacquie called after her.

Rose turned and gave her a wolfish grin. "To see the prime minister of course."


	3. Christmas in the Trenches

_A/N \- Sorry about that. Life got a little crazy, and my Muse went on vacation, the unreliable ****. Anyway, a very belated happy birthday to Doctorwhofan01 (hope I spelled that right) who is apparently also my number one fan. Thanks for all the encouragement. Hopefully, the last part of the Christmas Invasion will be up by the end of July, but after that I may be going AWOL again. My husband is starting his last semester of college in September, and we're expecting a baby in October. Needless to say, I will be busy and tired._

* * *

Chapter Three \- Christmas in the Trenches

She considered taking the TARDIS, but she honestly wasn't sure she could fly it. At least, not with any accuracy, and this was no time for a detour to Ancient Rome. She took a cab.

The cabbie had the radio on some late night news program. The host was fielding calls from all over the country, and all the callers wanted to talk about the alien on the telly. Some thought it was a hoax, but not all, and not all of those who believed sounded like nutters. _Is this it?_ she wondered. _Is this the moment when the human race finally opens its eyes to the universe?_

"D'you think it's real?" the cabbie asked her. "D'you think it's aliens?"

 _I know it's aliens. They're called the Sycorax, and they're probably here to enslave you. I'm an alien too, though I'm temporarily stuck in human form, but I'm a good alien. In fact, I'm probably your best hope of seeing tomorrow._ "Dunno," she said. "Probably just someone's idea of a joke."

"Yeah," the cabbie agreed. He sounded a little relieved.

It would take more than a strange looking face on a TV screen to wake this lot up. Funny how all the stories they told about creatures from other worlds only made them less willing to believe the real thing when it was staring them in the face.

Standing outside number ten, Downing Street, uncertainty almost overwhelmed her again. Getting in hadn't been a problem last time. She and the Doctor had been whisked inside faster than you could say "alien invasion". This time she was on her own, and no one but Harriet would recognize her or believe that she could help. She took a deep breath. _You're the Wolf. You can do this._

She walked up to the guard at the gate and said with as much confidence as she could muster, "I need to speak to the prime minister."

The guard looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and amusement. "And who do you think you are, then? The bloody princess of Fairyland?"

"I'm an old friend. She'll want to see me."

"Right," he said condescendingly. "Well, she's busy so bugger off."

"Look, can you just tell her that Rose Tyler is here? She'll know what it's about."

The guard's amusement was fading quickly, replaced by annoyance. "What part of bugger off was unclear?" he said. "You really expect me to believe that some scruffy kid in her dad's coat is friends with the prime minister? I wasn't born yesterday."

Rose looked down at herself and realized that in her hurry she'd put on the Doctor's leather jacket. It smelled of old books and engine oil and strong tea - the scent of the Doctor, the scent of safety and home. She reached into the pocket and pulled out the psychic paper. "There you go," she said, holding it up triumphantly. "Special Agent Rose Tyler, MI-5, undercover. Now will you please stop wasting my time and let me speak to the prime minister?"

The guard looked dubiously from her to the paper and back. "Just a moment," he said. He took a walkie talkie from his belt and talked to someone in a low voice. Rose caught the words 'prime minister', 'she says', and 'yes, sir'. When he turned back to her, his demeanor was a shade more respectful. "Someone will be down to escort you shortly," he said.

"Thank you," she said without the least bit of sarcasm.

They waited in uncomfortable silence. After a couple of minutes, the guard said, "Look, I'm sorry about the scruffy kid thing. You do look kind of disheveled. You infiltrating a street gang or something?"

"Something like that," she said, her mind drifting. She wondered if the Doctor had woken up yet. She'd like to think that she'd sense it when he did - she wouldn't let the word if anywhere near that thought - but in this cramped human brain she probably wouldn't.

"Well, it's a really good disguise," the guard said. "How old are you really?"

Her mind still on the Doctor, she answered without thinking. "Three hundred and nineteen."

The guard flushed and stopped talking. She realized belatedly that he thought she was having a joke on him, but before she could correct the error, the door of the house opened and a tall, dark skinned man with a shiny bald head and a military uniform came out. He hurried down the walkway, and the guard opened the gate for him.

The bald man looked Rose up and down. She was clearly not what he'd been expecting. "May I see your credentials?" he said.

She handed him the psychic paper.

He inspected it minutely, then said simply, "I see. And is this regarding the current crisis?"

"You mean the alien that just broadcasted its ugly face to the entire country?" Rose snapped. "Yeah."

The man winced. "We're, erm, trying to keeping that quiet."

"And you're doing a wonderful job. Almost everyone is convinced it was a hoax. I, however, know a real alien when I see one. I need to speak to Harriet Jones. Now."

"I've called a car to take you to her." As he said it, a black car pulled up to the curb.

"She's not here?" Rose asked, surprised.

"No. The prime minister is at the tower." He opened the rear door and waited for her to get in.

She briefly considered the possibility that this was a trap. That the aliens were already inside the government like last time and Harriet was dead. But she didn't have many options. She could get in the car, or she could go hide in the TARDIS and wait for the end of the world.

She got in the car.

They drove through central London, heading towards the river. "So what's this tower?" Rose asked.

The bald man gave her a confused look. "The tower? UNIT headquarters?"

"Oh, right," she said as though that explained everything. "That tower."

UNIT. The Doctor's old friends. Earth's first line of defense against all things alien, or so they like to tell everyone. Last time the Earth was invaded, all they'd managed to do was get massacred while an alien, a shopgirl, and a backbencher saved humanity.

The car stopped, and Rose found herself outside the Tower of London. "Oh, right," she muttered, getting out of the car. "That tower."

She'd been to the Tower a few times on school trips, but now she was led down stairways and along corridors she'd never seen. They were going deep underground, deeper than the infamous dungeons. They stopped at a blank stone wall, and the bald man touched a stone. It and most of the rest of the wall slid smoothly aside to reveal a cavernous room full of computers. People were hurrying back and forth between the banks of screens. They didn't seem panicked. Just very, very busy.

Rose was led to a conference room behind a glass partition, and there at last was Harriet Jones. She was talking to the nervous little man from the TV, the director of the Guinevere One project. He was saying, "But you're talking about aliens as a matter of fact." He looked as though he desperately wanted someone to shout April Fool.

Harriet gave him a slightly pitying look and said dryly, "There's an act of parliament banning my autobiography."

Rose snorted with laughter. "I'll bet there is."

Harriet spun around, her eyes widening in shock and delight. "Rose!" she exclaimed. Rushing forward, she folded Rose in a warm hug.

"Blimey," Rose said, caught off guard. "I don't think I've ever been hugged by a prime minister before."

Harriet released her, looking slightly abashed. "Sorry. It's good to see you again." Her eyes flickered over Rose's shoulder. "Is the Doctor with you?"

Rose shook her head. "He can't come. He's ... busy. But he sent me in his place."

Harriet did her very best to hide her disappointment. "Do you know who these aliens are?" she asked. "What they want?"

"Yes," Rose said, relieved that someone was finally listening to her. "The species you're dealing with is called the Sycorax. They're a migrant race."

"So they're not from Mars?" the nervous little man interrupted. His twitchy face reminded Rose of a rabbit.

"No, they're not from Mars, Mr..."

"Lewellyn, ma'am. Daniel Lewellyn."

"Mr. Lewellyn, don't ever call me ma'am. My name is Rose. The Sycorax homeworld was destroyed centuries ago. They live on their ships, surviving by piracy and slave trading."

"Slave trading?!" Mr. Lewellyn squeaked.

"You mean they're here to enslave the human race?" Harriet asked, her voice deceptively calm.

"Not all of it," Rose said. "They usually take about half the population, mostly children, but they'll kill anyone who resists them."

"And how do you know so much about them?" Mr. Lewellyn asked suspiciously.

"I travel," she said shortly. She turned to Harriet. "Since they said hello via your probe, I assume they have it on their ship. Can you track it?"

Harriet looked to the bald man. "Major Blake?"

He nodded. "Over here, ma'am."

Rose followed Harriet over to a bank of screens displaying satellite tracking data. A young woman in a business suit was monitoring the screens. She stood up when she saw the prime minister.

"Harriet Jones," Harriet said, and then added as though she was afraid the girl wouldn't recognize the name, "prime minister."

"Yes," the girl said, looking slightly confused. "I know who you are."

Rose hid a smile, remembering when Harriet had introduced herself as MP for Flydale North with the exact same anxious pride.

The girl hesitated, then seemed to decide that the best course of action when face with a friendly world leader was to do her job. "We've got the ship on the Hubble Array," she reported. "It's moving towards us. Fast. At their current speed, they'll reach us in five hours."

"We're receiving another transmission," someone called across the room.

"Put it on the main screen," Harriet ordered.

A huge screen on the far wall lit up with an image of the same alien face that had appeared on televisions all over the country. Except this time there were three of them. One was seated, the other two standing behind him. Or possibly her, but the Sycorax were a strongly patriarchal race. Rose studied the carvings on their battle masks and decided that the seated one was probably the captain while the other two were high ranking warriors, likely the captain's brothers or sons.

The Sycorax captain began to speak, and Rose experienced a strange sensation. It was as though she was hearing the words twice, once in the Sycorax language and once in Gallifreyan, two identical voices overlapping in her mind. It made her realize for the first time that she'd been thinking in Gallifreyan since her awakening. She wondered why the TARDIS translation matrix wasn't converting the message completely. Was there something wrong with her, or was it because of what was happening to the Doctor? Had he gotten worse again after she left?

"Can you understand them?" Harriet asked.

"Yeah. Just ... give me a minute." She pushed away her fears for the Doctor and focused on the words. "People," she translated, deciding not to tell them that a more accurate translation would be "cattle". "You belong to the Sycorax. We own you." She skipped over a bunch of poetic posturing. the Sycorax never passed up a chance to say the same thing three different ways. "Surrender or ... they will die."

She hesitated a momen over the pronoun. Gallifreyan had a very complex pronoun system. The one the TARDIS translation matrix had chosen meant something like "blood relatives of the entity being adressed".

"They," Mr. Lewellyn repeated in confusion. "Not 'you will die'. Who's 'they'?"

The transmission ended abruptly.

"Well," Harriet said softly. "That was ominous." She looked to Rose. "You know more about these Sycorax than any of us? How should we respond?"

Rose looked at her in surprise. "Do you really trust me to make that decision?"

The prime minister smiled at her. "I trust you to do what the Doctor would do."

Rose considered that. What would the Doctor do? As soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer. "We talk to them," she said. "We try to resolve this peacefully. But we do not surrender."

~o0o~

Harriet chose the words of the message, and they were good words. Proud words. No begging for mercy, just offering a hand in friendship, a chance for peace. The message concluded as they all agreed it should, "We do not surrender."

And then they waited while the minutes ticked by and the alien ship got closer and closer. Christmas Day dawned bright and cold, but Rose didn't see it in the windowless room under the Tower. She found a quiet corner and catnapped sitting up.

She wished she could mindlink with the Doctor and see how he was doing, but it had been hard enough when they were in the same room. She was on her own.

Dimly, she heard Harriet talking to Major Blake.

"I take it she is the Doctor's companion," the Major was saying. "But where is the Doctor? Why hasn't he come?"

"I don't know," Harriet said. She sounded even more tired than Rose felt. "But if he sent Rose in his place, he trusts her, and so must we."

"But how far, ma'am? She is only human. If she cannot turn back the ship, if the worst should happen, we must have a backup plan."

"Torchwood."

The word meant nothing to Rose, but it apparently shocked Major Blake because Harriet rushed on, talking over him.

"I know I'm not supposed to know about them. That's beside the point right now. Can they be of use if, as you put it, the worst should happen?"

"I can't take responsibility, ma'am."

"I can," Harriet said firmly. "See to it."

"Yes, ma'am." Major Blake's footsteps retreated.

Rose was left with an ominous feeling that had nothing to do with the imminent alien invasion.


	4. A Star Dancing in the Night

_A/N - It's been pointed out to me that I've been misspelling Jackie's name, and as you'll notice if you notice these things, I haven't fixed it in this chapter. This is because I really don't want to go back and fix it in all three of my previously published chapters, and I've decided it's more important to maintain continuity within my story than to conform to every detail of canon. This is an alternate universe after all, so maybe in the Wolf's universe it's spelled Jacquie._

* * *

Chapter Four \- A Star Dancing in the Night

The response came two hours after dawn. Everyone in the secret room under the Tower of London watched the big screen, holding their breath as the Sycorax captain reappeared. Would this, Earth's first contact with alien life, (or the first most of them knew about), end peacefully, or would the human race go to war?

The Sycorax captain didn't speak a word, just raised a clawlike hand. A strange blue light danced around his fingers like static building on a telephone wire in a thunderstorm. Then the transmission ended.

Harriet looked to Rose. "Do you know what that meant?"

Rose shook her head, but a memory was niggling at the back of her overcrowded mind. She'd seen that light before. She tried to quiet her thoughts and let the memory surface, but the room, so deathly still a moment ago, was in turmoil as everyone scrambled to decipher the alien's message. Her head started to hurt.

Shouts of confusion and alarm made her look around. People were abandoning their workstations and walking blank faced and silent toward the doors. Not everyone, but a lot of them. The young woman who'd been monitoring the satellite screens was among them. Mr. Llewellyn followed her, tugging on her arm and calling, "Sally? Sally!" , but she didn't seem to hear him.

Glowing on the faces of the sleepwalkers was that same eerie light. Rose was now sure she'd seen it before, a very long time ago.

The guards at the door raised their weapons as the sleepwalkers advanced, but Harriet shouted, "Let them pass!" and the men backed down. The sleepwalkers filed out the door in an orderly fashion and turned toward the stairs , heading up. Several of those unaffected, including Mr. Lewellyn, followed to see where they went.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut. She had the beginnings of a headache like a needle through her brain, and she knew she was upsetting the precarious balance of the two lives in her head, but she had to remember.

And then, like a stuck door popping open, the memory was there. It had been before the Academy, before they called her the Wolf. She and her sister Pella had gone to the circus and met a witch. The old woman said she could tell their futures if they each gave her a drop of their blood. Pella got scared and ran away, but the girl who would become the Wolf stood her ground. Her curiosity was stronger than her fear.

The next thing she remembered was waking up in a cage. The City Watch had arrested her for pickpocketing. She'd never been more frightened in her short life, but before long her father turned up with a shamefaced Pella in tow. When the watchmen heard about the witch, they released her. She might have forgotten the incident completely, the childish fear lost among the million stranger and more terrifying things she'd seen in the centuries since, if not for the nightmares. For almost a year afterward she'd woken screaming in the night, remembering the witch's hand reaching for her wreathed in ghostly blue light.

Mr. Llewellyn was back. Apparently all the sleepwalkers had climbed up to the roof, walked to the very edge, and stopped.

"It's happening all over the world," Major Blake said. "Early reports estimate it's affecting about a third of the population. That's two billion people ready to jump. "

"They won't jump," Rose said.

Everyone looked at her incredulously. "But ... that light, " Mr. Llewellyn said. "Somehow the Sycorax are controlling them with that light. This must be what they meant. 'Surrender or they will die.'"

"Oh, they want you to think they can make those people jump if you don't cooperate, but it's only blood control. Cheap party trick. If you have a sample of someone's blood or a close genetic match, you can control them. It's like hypnosis. You shut down the conscious mind, put them to sleep, and then you take over the body, make them walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis -"

"Or jump off a roof?" Harriet suggested.

" No. No more than you could make a hypnotized person shoot himself in the head. Survival instinct's too strong. If they try to make those people jump, it'll break their control instantly. "

"You're sure?" Mr. Llewellyn asked anxiously, but Major Blake cut across him. "But where did they get a sample of human blood? And why is it only affecting certain people?"

Rose hadn't worked that bit out yet. Blood control shouldn't even work on such a large scale or at such a distance unless they had some sort of signal amplifier, but before she could tell them this, Mr. Llewellyn said, "It's my fault."

All attention turned to him, and he shuffled his feet guiltily. "It's Guinevere One," he said, not meeting anyone's eyes, especially Harriet's. "It has one of those plaques identifying the human race in case it was found by ... well, aliens. Is just something you do," he rushed on. "You don't expect anything to come of it. We put on books and music, star charts and soil samples ... And blood. A sample of human blood."

On a hunch, Rose asked, "What blood type?"

"A positive. My assistant, Sally, donated it."

"Sally who is currently on the roof?"

He nodded, turning a pleading look on Rose. "You're sure she's in no danger?"

"Absolutely sure," Rose said. "She won't even remember this. "

"Well, there you are, Major," Harriet said. "Their blood sample is A positive, so only people with A positive blood are being affected. The question is, do we call their bluff?"

"Not until the right moment," Rose said. "That ship still has guns. They're only bothering with this little sideshow because they don't want valuable slaves getting killed in the crossfire."

At that moment, a tremor ran through the room. Dust fell from the ceiling, and everyone looked up apprehensively as though the ancient tower might collapse on top of them.

"Shock wave," Rose said. "The ship is entering the atmosphere." It must be massive for them to feel it all the way down here, a tribal flagship at least. There'd be broken windows all over the city. She hoped everyone up on the roofs had kept their footing. She turned to Harriet. "Prime minister, they'll be giving us another call soon, and this time I think I should do the talking. The Sycorax are very temperamental. Easily offended, if you take my meaning."

Harriet drew herself up rather haughtily. She was so small that it really shouldn't have been all that impressive, but somehow it was as intimidating as a mother bear rearing up on its hind legs. _Blimey_ , Rose thought. _When did she learn to do that? She could give the Queen lessons._ "I've spoken before the British Parliament, child," Harriet said gently. "I think I can handle a tough crowd."

"I don't doubt it," Rose said, trying not to take offense at the 'child'. As far as Harriet knew she was only nineteen and her sole qualification was Traveling With the Doctor. "But the worst Parliament can do is shout you down or vote you out. If the Sycorax don't like what you have to say, they'll kill you on the spot. You're too valuable to this world to take that risk."

"She's right, ma'am," said Major Blake. "We can't put you in danger, and Miss Tyler, despite her youth, knows more about these Sycorax than any of us. It seems logical to put her forward as our negotiator."

Harriet relented with obvious reluctance. "Very well, but I expect you to comport yourself with the utmost dignity. Remember, Rose, you are representing the human race."

Rose tried not to laugh at the irony of that.

When the Sycorax captain appeared on the screen again, it was a live connection. He could see them as well as they could see him, but it was impossible to tell what he thought of them. His battle mask completely hid his expression. He spoke in the guttural Sycorax language, and in her mind Rose heard the words, _"Who speaks for this planet?"_

She stepped forward, trying to look as old as she felt. She was uncomfortably aware that the Doctor 's too large leather jacket made her look like a child playing dress up, but she didn't want to take it off. It was as close as she would get to having him at her side. "I do," she said.

He stared at her for a long moment, sizing her up. Finally he said, _"Come aboard."_

She felt a warm tingling sensation spreading over her skin. The world dissolved and reformed, and then the Sycorax captain was standing before her in the flesh. They were in a circular chamber with tiered platforms rising around the walls, and those platforms were filled with Sycorax in full battle dress. Rose attempted a quick head count but stopped when she reached fifty and still hadn't covered even a quarter of the room.

Harriet, Mr. Lewellyn, and Major Blake were still standing behind her. Perhaps the Sycorax captain wasn't taking her claim of leadership at face value. Perhaps he wanted to see what the others would do if she failed. Or perhaps he just wanted an audience for his little magic show. Whatever the reason, she hoped they all had the sense to keep their mouths shut and not draw attention to themselves.

Her eye was drawn to the device beside the captain, the one with the big red button. A smile spread over her face. This part was going to be fun.

The Sycorax captain reached up to remove his battle mask, and Mr. Llewellyn whispered, "It's a helmet. They might look like us."

"Quiet, " Rose hissed.

The Sycorax did actually look a bit like humans, or rather like humans who'd been turned inside out. They had an external skull encasing their head like a cowl, and the red ropes of their muscles were clearly visible through their transparent skin. Add in their ceremonial robes decorated with small animal bones and fur, and the entire effect was reminiscent of an anatomy dummy that someone had dressed up as a witch doctor for a Halloween prank.

 _"One half will be sold into slavery,"_ the captain said, his voice echoing in the cavernous chamber, _"or one third will die. Choose."_

"What's he saying?" Major Blake asked.

"The same thing he's been saying all along," Rose said. "Now be quiet!" She turned back to the Sycorax captain and folded her arms. "Go on then. Kill them."

The captain hesitated, confused.

"Well? What are you waiting for? All talk, are ya? Fine then. I'll do it myself." She started forward and slammed her hand down on the button before he could stop her.

The effect was anticlimactic. What happened was ...nothing. No flashing lights, no wailing alarms, not even a beep. Rose gave the Sycorax captain her sweetest smile. "Great. Now that we've got that over with, can we have a proper conversation without any more empty threats?"

The captain tilted his head, examining her like she was a species of insect he'd never seen before. _"Who are you?"_

She shook her head. "That's complicated. Try something else. Like, what do I want."

He glared at her in silence.

"All right. I'll tell you anyway. I want to kill you. I've had a really, really long day, and I just want to kill you and go home, but I have a friend who wouldn't approve. He'd say I've got to give you a chance. So ..."

He just stared at her. If he'd been human he would have been raising his eyebrows.

"So this is your chance," she clarified. "Turn around and fly away. Leave this planet, and I will spare your lives."

Every single Sycorax burst out laughing. The room amplified the sound until it seemed to take on a life of its own. The echoes lasted almost a full minute after the actual laughter died away.

Rose waited patiently. She could feel Harriet's eyes on her,and for the first time she was glad the Doctor wasn't here. She didn't want him to see her truly become the Wolf.

"You think you can defeat me and all my warriors?" the captain asked mockingly. "You're a little girl."

Rose let her mind sink into the timeless space between moments,the place where the distance between heartbeats was as vast as the distance between stars. To her surprise it was no harder with a human brain. It actually seemed a little easier than she remembered.

"Girl, yes," she said,her voice deep and growling in her own ears, though to everyone else it would sound perfectly normal. "Little, maybe." She grinned. "But I'm so much bigger on the inside."

She began walking towards the captain at a leisurely pace that would be a blur of movement to the watchers. She saw his eyes widen,fear spreading across his face as gently as a sunrise. He took a whip from his belt and lashed at her. She sidestepped it lazily, grabbed it from him with one hand, and snapped his neck with the other.

As he crumpled lifeless at her feet, she let time flow through her again. Her headache was gone. She looked around at the assembled Sycorax. Their expressionless masks betrayed no fear, but the rest of their bodies were not so enigmatic. They all shuffled backward on their platforms, crushing the ones in the back against the walls as they tried to get as far from her as possible without actually appearing to be running away.

"Who is second in command?" she asked.

After some muttering that needed no translation, a Sycorax stepped out of the crowd on the nearest tier. A slight lurch to his first step suggested the crowd was helping him along. "Are you a witch?" he asked,avoiding her eyes as though she could strike him dead with a look.

She smiled when she realized she was only hearing the words in one language. The Doctor was awake.

"No," she said. "Just a wolf. Your captain's mistake doesn't have to be yours too. The offer stands. Leave us in peace, and we'll do the same for you."

He darted a quick look at the body at her feet, then at the whip in her hand. It was an electro-whip. It could reduce him to bones and ash with a single strike. He nodded frantically. "We will. I swear it."

"Glad to hear it. " She dropped the whip on top of the dead captain. "If you'll just let us off, you can be on your way." She rejoined Harriet and the others, trying to pretend she didn't see the fear in their eyes when they looked at her.

The teleport didn't put them back in the secret room under the Tower. When the world reformed, they were standing in a dingy backstreet that was a vaguely familiar to Rose. They couldn't be too far from the Powell Estate. The Sycorax ship hung in the sky. From the outside it looked like a giant boulder with engines stuck on. It didn't look at all aerodynamic, but as they watched it rose into the atmosphere, shrinking to a gray dot, then vanishing completely.

Behind her, Rose heard Major Blake say quietly to Harriet, "Ma'am, Torchwood reports they're ready, waiting on your command."

Rose turned slowly on the spot and looked the prime minister in the eye. Harriet stared back, unblinking. They stayed that way for a long time, the most powerful woman in the country and the girl who'd just saved the world.

"Ma'am," Major Blake prompted.

"Tell them ..."

Rose held her breath.

"Tell them thank you but the situation has been resolved. They may stand down."

~o0o~

When Rose got back to the flat, the Doctor was sitting up in bed while Jacquie fussed over him. Rose flew into his arms, almost upsetting the mug of tea he was holding.

"Hello," he said cheerfully, hugging her with his free hand. "You did it, then? Saved the world?"

"Yep. All sorted. Easy peasy."

"Never doubted you for a minute."

" Don't you tire him out now, " Jacquie warned, shaking her finger. "I'm gonna go check on the turkey."

"Turkey?" Rose said. "What are you cooking a turkey for?"

"Well, it is still Christmas, alien invasions notwithstanding, and with himself up and about again, I thought we'd have a proper sit down, all four of us."

Rose darted a look at the Doctor, half expecting him to mutter something about domestics and make a beeline for the TARDIS, but he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

When Jacquie disappeared into the kitchen, he said, "I think she's growing on me."

"She does that," Rose said. "Like a fungus. Do you really need more rest, or was that her excuse to force feed you tea?"

"Oh, I'm fine now. Never felt better. But she does make a good cup of tea, your mum. I admit I've been milking it just a little. So how'd you do it? Tell me everything. "

She glanced nervously at the door, or rather the Christmas tree shaped hole where the door used to be. There was no sign of Jacquie, but the woman was a champion eavesdropper, and there were many questions Rose wasn't prepared to answer yet.

She began telling the events of the last few hours in Gallifreyan. Not the untranslateable Old High Gallifreyan that only the Time Lords used, but the ordinary Gallifreyan she'd spoken since childhood.

The Doctor's face lit up with delight at the sound of his native language, and she realized with a pang of sympathy that it had been at least as long for him as it had been for her. Between one thing and another, she hadn't had much time to think about it. Or perhaps she'd been trying not to think about it. The two of them were the last of their kind. The Doctor and the Wolf - not just the last Time Lords, but the last Gallifreyans.

She did tell him everything, even the parts she really didn't want to. If they were the last of their kind, they couldn't afford to lie to each other.

As she'd feared, his grin faded when she spoke about killing the Sycorax captain. "You did what?" he said.

"I had no choice," she rushed to explain, her heart cold in her chest. If he hated her for this, if he left her behind ... "I gave him a chance. He wouldn't listen."

But the Doctor waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly. "Not that. I understand that. But ... you slowed down time? How? You're human ... mostly."

" I know, " she said, doing her best to hide her relief. "I thought it would be hard. Mindlinking with you was like lifting a mountain. But this was ... easy. Natural. It even cured my headache."

This didn't reassure him. If anything, he looked more worried. "Promise me you won't do it again," he said. "Not until we put you right."

"But-"

"Please." He touched her cheek gently. "I can't lose you, Wolf. I can't ... I can't be alone again."

It was the first time since the regeneration that he'd used her real name. Not the Big Bad Wolf, just Wolf. And it was the first time since the Tribunal sentenced her to death that she'd heard her name spoken in Gallifreyan.

She put her hand over his and said, "I promise."

~o0o~

Christmas dinner was surprisingly tasty, and the Doctor still in his borrowed pajamas, didn't seem the least bit discomfited by the domestics. On the contrary, he was the life of the party. He pulled a cracker with Jacquie and wore the pink paper crown that came out at a rakish angle atop his spiky brown hair for the rest of the day. He didn't call Mickey Rickey once.

As night fell it began to snow. Most of the estate piled out into the yard, and Mickey and the Doctor had a snowball fight in which the paper crown got knocked off and trampled.

As Rose watched Jacquie and their neighbor Beth dancing around like schoolgirls and catching snowflakes in their mouths, she felt a deep sadness welling up in her. One last Christmas with her human family, she'd told herself, and now it was over.

She felt a hand slip into hers and looked up at the Doctor. "Do you want to stay a bit longer?" he asked.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. She knew he would do it if she asked him to, and she knew he would hate it despite his newfound liking for Jacquie's tea. She shook her head. "No. I don't belong here anymore."

She hesitated a moment, unsure if she should say what she'd been about to say. He'd gotten so scared when she told him about slowing time. But the words pressed on her tongue. She had to say it out loud, if only to reassure herself that it wasn't a dream or some elaborate hallucination. "I remembered my family," she said. " My... "

She almost said 'my real family', but she took one look at Jacquie and Mickey, and the words died in her throat.

"My other family," she went on. "I had a sister. Pella. We were as different as night and day, but we were inseparable when we were little. I can remember the exact color of her eyes, the sound of her voice... She's dead now, isn't she?"

He let go of her hand and put his arms around her instead. She laid her head on his shoulder. His scent had changed too. It was less like engine oil and more like sea salt, or the air before a thunderstorm.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "I'm so, so sorry."

"I knew I'd never see them again," she said, talking to herself as much as to him. "But I thought it would be because I was dead, not because they were. It's easy giving things up when you think you won't be around to miss them."

"Yes," the Doctor said. "Surviving is always the harder part."

She looked up at him. "Easier if you don't have to do it alone."

He looked into her eyes,and though his face was younger than it had been yesterday, those eyes were ancient. She could only imagine how much he had seen, how much he had lost long before she was born. Compared to him she really was a child. And then he smiled like a little boy. "Where shall we go first?" he asked.

She looked up into the sky. Stars glittered through the falling snow, more stars than she'd ever seen over London before. The Sycorax must have shattered a few thousand streetlamps.

She chose a star that looked especially bright. "That way," she said.


	5. The Sound of Silence

_A/N - I know I promised you Ten/Rose shipping, and I haven't really delivered, but hey, they've been busy saving the world. This chapter is pure Ten/Rose fluff. Seriously, it's so sweet you may get cavities. Hopefully, the first chapter of the New Earth story arc will be up next month. I'm trying to get as far along as I can before my schedule turns upside down in October. Turns out I'm having twins!_

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Chapter Five \- The Sound of Silence

They ended up staying the night. The TARDIS needed some maintenance work after her run-in with Mickey and his big, yellow truck, and Rose desperately needed a full night's sleep. She'd saved the world twice in three days while subsisting on cat naps and tea.

But as soon as she collapsed into bed, she suddenly found it impossible to slip into unconsciousness. Instead of the familiar, steady hum of the TARDIS engines, she was surrounded by a veritable orchestra of tiny, ordinary noises. The dishwasher chugging away in the kitchen, Mickey snoring on the sofa, the endless swish of London traffic filtering through the window along with the occasional drunken Christmas carol. And every sound made her more aware of the silence inside her head.

She'd noticed it as soon as she woke up on the floor of the TARDIS, but between nursing the Doctor through his regeneration and preventing the enslavement of the human race, she'd been able to ignore it. Now, with no alien invasions to keep her busy, the echoing emptiness seemed to swallow her whole. All her life, right up to the moment she stepped into the Mortality Machine, she'd been able to hear the minds around her. Even when she couldn't tell what they were thinking or feeling, they were always there like whispers behind a closed door. Now they were gone, and the loneliness was a physical ache in her chest right where her second heart should be.

At two in the morning, she gave up on sleep, put on a coat and slippers, and padded carefully past the sleeping Mickey and down to the snow covered courtyard. As soon as she stepped through the TARDIS doors a headache she hadn't consciously noticed disappeared. She patted the nearest pillar gratefully and closed the door behind her, shutting out the cold winter night.

The Doctor crawled out from under the console, sonic screwdriver in hand. He had grease smudges on his face, his hair was sticking out in every direction, and he was still wearing his borrowed pajamas. Somehow the combination was sexy as hell. Or maybe that was the sleep deprivation talking.

"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. "Thought you were sleeping."

"So did I. My body had other ideas."

A worried look crossed his face. She was becoming very familiar with that look. "More headaches?" he asked.

"Just a small one. It's gone now. Mostly it's the silence that's getting to me. In here." She tapped her temple.

"Ah," he said quietly. "I wondered if you'd be able to feel that. I hoped you wouldn't."

She sat down heavily on the jump seat. Every muscle ached with exhaustion. She remembered what he'd said after they found the last surviving Dalek - or so they thought at the time - in Henry Van Statten's museum, when she'd suggested that maybe other Time Lords had survived too. _"I'd know. In here. Feels like there's no one."_ "How long?" she asked. "How long have you been living like this?"

He stood up and leaned against the console facing her. "When I met you it had been about a year. I think."

She looked up at him, surprised. "You think?" Time Lords were never uncertain about time.

"My time senses were a bit hazy for a while," he admitted sheepishly. "When Gallifrey died ... all those minds silenced in one instant, all those futures just gone, never to be-" He stopped talking abruptly and looked away, but not before she glimpsed the agony on his face.

She stood up, crossed the short distance between them, and wrapped her arms around him. He went very still, and for a moment she thought she'd done the wrong thing. She was about to pull away when he suddenly returned the hug fiercely, burying his face in her shoulder. His cheek felt wet against her neck.

She held him, and he held her, and she didn't know which of them was the drowning man and which the life preserver. She wished she could mindlink with him and ease the loneliness for both of them, but she didn't think she had the strength to initiate a connection like she had before, and he didn't suggest it so maybe he wasn't ready for that yet. She contented herself with physical closeness for now.

After a long minute, he released her, and she tactfully looked away, pretending she didn't notice him drying his eyes. "Anyway," he said, his voice deceptively casual, "it was a bit like a traumatic brain injury. I had trouble keeping track of time. Sometimes days seemed like months and sometimes they seemed like minutes. I could barely sense timelines at all. Nearly ran into a couple of fixed points."

Suddenly something she'd been wondering about for a while made sense. "That's why-"

"Yes, that's why I brought you home twelve months late." He grimaced. "Sorry about that. I was almost recovered by then, but it still wasn't entirely reliable. Like being blind in one eye."

"Oh," she said. "Actually, I was thinking of all the things you did before you met me. Karakatoa, the JFK assassination, stopping that family from boarding the Titanic."

It was his turn to look surprised. "How do you know about that?"

"Oh, right. I never told you, did I?" She briefly recounted her short lived career in internet stalking and her meeting with Clive. "At the time I didn't know what it all meant. I thought maybe Clive was right and you were immortal ... What?"

He was looking at her with a strange mixture of admiration and alarm. "Rose, you went to meet a man you found on the internet because he happened to have a picture of me? You give new meaning to the words jeopardy friendly."

"Well, what did you expect?" she said a little defensively. "You save me from homicidal mannequins, then blow up a building. If you'd left it at that, I might, might have been able to go back to ordinary life. But then you show up at my door, save my life again, and then vanish - literally vanish - right in front of me. Did you really think I could go home, watch telly, and eat beans on toast after that?"

"No, I suppose that was a bit much to ask," he conceded. "Still, this Clive person could have been an ax murderer."

She rolled her eyes. "You sound like Mickey."

"Oi! No need to get insulting."

She laughed. It felt good to laugh and talk instead of lying in the dark listening to the silence. Which reminded her of what they'd been discussing when they got sidetracked. "A whole year alone," she said, taking his hand and leaning against the console next to him. "No one to talk to. No wonder that version of you was a bit mad."

"You don't know the half of it," he muttered.

"What do you mean?"

He looked away. "Nothing. Just ... what you said earlier. Surviving isn't much fun if you have to do it alone." He squeezed her hand. "Which is one of the many reasons I'm so glad I met you." His brilliant smile almost hid the pain in his eyes.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about that," she said. "Don't you think it's a rather large coincidence that of all the billions of humans on this planet, you found the one who happened to have a Time Lady hibernating in her head?"

"Oh, I don't believe in coincidences," he said with a sly grin.

She grinned back. "Neither do I. So what is this then? Fate? Destiny? Really good luck?"

"Could be all three."

She opened her mouth to say something in reply, but the words got lost in a jaw cracking yawn.

"You really need to sleep, Rose," he said, worry furrowing his brow again.

She conceded the point with another yawn and took a step towards her room, but then she changed her mind. "I think I'll just lay down here."

"You sure? I still have some repairs to do. Might be noisy."

"S' okay. I'd rather not be alone." She stretched out on the grating and pillowed her head on her arm. It was very uncomfortable, but the subliminal vibrations of the TARDIS were soothing.

She heard the Doctor's footsteps leaving the control room, but he was back less than a minute later. "Pick up your head," he said, kneeling beside her.

"Wha' for?"

He gave a half frustrated, half amused snort and gently lifted her head himself. When he lowered it again, it landed on something soft. He'd gotten her pillow from her room. A moment later a warm quilt settled on top of her, and she allowed him to roll her over so he could tuck the thick fabric between her and the grating.

His lips ghosted over her cheek, and the last thing she heard before she finally fell asleep was his voice whispering, "Sweet dreams. My Rose."


	6. Somewhere New

_A/N \- A quick word about this story's relationship to canon. I think we can safely assume that in DW canon Rose was not actually a Time Lady called the Wolf. This story is an AU. A lot of things from the canon will still happen. Some things will happen a little differently than they did in the show, and some things from the show won't happen at all. For example, Lady Cassandra DOES NOT appear in this story at all. For the purposes of the next few chapters we're going to assume there is no sociopathic skin trampoline hiding in the basement of the hospital. Either Cassandra died on Satellite Five or she's in hiding somewhere else. Either way, she is (and in my opinion, always was) completely irrelevant to this story arc, and the writers just put her in so they'd have an excuse for Rose to kiss Ten without actually ... yeah. Also while I have your attention, I recently published a one-shot about Rose and Nine. It's called "Asking Twice" and you'd make me the happiest little writer in the world if you'd check it out and leave a review._

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Chapter Six \- Somewhere New

All through that long night, while Rose slept curled up like a cat on the floor beside him, the Doctor wracked his brain for a way to keep his promise. But when she woke, yawned a greeting at him, and stumbled off to the galley for her morning cuppa, he still hadn't the faintest idea how to go about changing a human into a Time Lady.

Doing it the other way round would have been easy, if excruciatingly painful. He had a Chameleon Arch around here somewhere, but without a sample of the Wolf's original DNA it was useless.

He was almost finished the repairs when Rose came back into the control room, her hair damp from the shower, wearing jeans and a purple shirt that perfectly complemented her pink complexion. He quickly returned his attention to the burnt out circuit he was pulling out of the console before she noticed his gaze lingering on the shirt's tantalizingly low neckline.

This had been a persistent problem since his regeneration. Oh, he'd loved Rose Tyler almost from the moment he met her. Loved her courage, her compassion, her insatiable thirst for adventure, and her determination to do the right thing even if it meant arguing with the designated driver. But this new body was … well, new. Young and virile, and it seemed to be interpreting his feelings for her in a whole new way. It was distracting to say the least.

"I'm going up to the flat to get a few things," she said, shrugging into the coat she'd left on the jump seat and covering her wet hair with a knit cap. "When do you want to leave?"

"Whenever you're ready. I'm almost done here." Once she was bundled up, he risked looking at her again. She was still unreasonably beautiful, but with most of that soft pink skin hidden, he found it a bit easier to control his reactions.

"Okay. Gimme an hour to pack and deal with Mum's usual guilt trip. And you might want to put some clothes on before we go exploring the planet Zod or whatever."

He looked down at his striped pajamas. He didn't remember putting them on before he collapsed which left only three possibilities, and he wasn't sure which one was most disturbing. To distract himself from the mental image of Rose undressing him, an image in which he was fully conscious, he said, "How do you know this isn't the height of fashion where we're going?"

She grinned. "Suppose I don't. Where are we going?"

"Haven't decided yet. Any requests?"

She thought about it. "Somewhere … new."

"Your wish is my command." He gave her a little bow and she giggled. She was halfway to the door when he remembered there was something important they hadn't discussed yet. "Rose?" he called.

She turned.

"Are you going to tell them?"

All the laughter vanished from her eyes, and she seemed to shrink a little, her shoulders drooping. "No. Not yet. I … I can't."

"Rose-"

"I know," she rushed on before he could say anything else. "I have to eventually, and I will, but not right now. Not until we figure out how to fix me. Telling them I'm not human will be hard enough. I can't follow up with 'and I'm dying.' It's too cruel."

The words turned him cold. "You're not going to die," he said firmly. "I won't let that happen."

She smiled wanly. "I know, but Mum doesn't trust you like I do. If we tell her now, she might slap you so hard you'll regenerate again."

"Ah. Good point." He rather liked this face. He wanted to keep it a while. "Best keep it to ourselves then. For now."

"For now," she agreed. "Before I change back I'll explain everything to them."

Her absolute faith in his ability to keep his promise was both reassuring and terrifying. "See you in an hour, then," he said.

When he finished the repairs, he washed the engine grease off his hands and face and wandered off to the wardrobe room. The simple ritual of figuring out what styles suited his new body and his new personality kept him occupied for a while. Last time he'd been too guilt ridden and too aware of the aching silence in his head to enjoy this part. He'd grabbed the first thing that looked approximately the right size and rushed off to find the quickest, least embarrassing way to get himself killed. It was almost a year before he even bothered to look in a mirror.

This time he chose carefully, passing over several eye watering outfits he would have pounced on in his younger days. He settled on a fitted brown and blue pinstripe suit over a dark blue oxford shirt. From a shelf of shoes he chose a pair of red chucks, perfect for running, and finished the ensemble with a long, fawn colored coat that had been a gift from Janis Joplin some time during his fourth regeneration.

He examined his reflection critically. Not bad, he decided. Shame about the hair. Still, at least he had hair this time around. And he had two more regenerations left. He was bound to be ginger one of these days.

He was transferring the contents of his pockets when he felt it. The leather wallet containing the psychic paper grew warm in his hand. He flipped it open and read the message written there, a tiny flare of hope igniting in his hearts.

WARD 26.

PLEASE COME.

I CAN HELP HER.

He ran all the way back to the control room, the coat billowing dramatically behind him. Oh, yes. He was going to get very attached to this coat. At the bottom of the message was a string of numbers and symbols that would be unintelligible to anyone not trained in Vortex navigation. He entered them into the TARDIS navigation database and bounced impatiently on his toes until a name appeared on the scanner in Gallifreyan script.

SISTERS OF SANTORI HOSPITAL

He ran his fingers through his hair - a new habit apparently - and considered the possibilities. A hospital did seem like the obvious place to go looking for a way to save someone's life, and the Order of Santori were supposed to have been the greatest healers in the universe in their time, but unless they were true miracle workers, he doubted they could cure an acute case of being the wrong species. But even so …

Someone there thought they could help, or at least wanted him to think that, and it wasn't as though he had a better idea. Then he remembered where Sisters of Santori Hospital was located, and a grin spread across his face. _Somewhere new._ Well, that certainly qualified.

The TARDIS doors opened and closed behind him, and he quickly erased the scanner. He didn't want to get her hopes up before he even knew who had sent the message. If someone was wasting his time, using Rose's condition to lure him into a trap or send him on a wild goose chase, they would be very sorry. He had no sense of humor about this.

Rose left her bag and coat by the door and jogged up the ramp to join him. He busied himself setting the coordinates and tried to ignore the way those jeans hugged her figure like they'd been made just for her.

"So where are we going?" she asked, peering over his shoulder.

He caught a whiff of coconut shampoo and quickly engaged his respiratory bypass before a misplaced decimal could send them on a detour to the Middle Ages. "As requested, somewhere new. At least I think so. I don't know how much you got around in your, um, previous life."

"Not much. I was a soldier. The only planets I was allowed to visit were the ones we were at war with."

It wasn't the words so much as the matter of fact tone that took him aback. He'd had a glimpse of what the Wolf was capable of on the Game Station, and he knew what she'd done to protect the Earth while he was recovering, but he still had difficulty imagining his bright, innocent Rose amid the carnage of the Time War, blood on her hands.

From a dark corner of his mind that he seldom visited if he could help it, a voice he didn't want to recognize as his own whispered, _She can't have more blood on her hands than you._

"Well then," he said brightly, "it's high time you got to do some sightseeing."

~o0o~

They landed on a grassy hillside overlooking a shining bay. A graceful white bridge arced over the water, and on the far side a city of glass and silver glittered in the sun. Overhead air-cars swept by like a flight of fat, metal swallows. They appeared to be directly beneath a major highway. The air was warm but not too hot - late spring just starting to bleed into summer.

"It's beautiful," Rose breathed, looking around with wide eyes. The Doctor was pleased to see that her reawakened memories hadn't dampened her sense of wonder. Time Lords could be such a jaded lot. "Where are we?" she asked.

"We are in the galaxy M-87. It is the the year five billion and twenty three. And this …" He gestured at the hill, the water, the city, and the endless expanse of blue sky over it all. "This is New Earth."

She took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air. "What's that smell? It's like …"

"Apples?"

"Yeah." Despite the constant traffic overhead, the hillside smelled like an apple orchard in full bloom.

The Doctor bent down and plucked a blade of grass. "Applegrass," he said, holding it out for her to sniff. "Specially engineered. Only grows on this planet. They plant it near highways because it feeds on the fumes from hydrostatic engines. Natural air freshener." He popped the little green shoot into his mouth and immediately spat it out. "Sadly it still just tastes like grass."

She giggled at his antics, her tongue poking out between her teeth, and he fought an almost overpowering urge to kiss her. Sweet Rassilon, it was like a second adolescence, except he'd never had a first adolescence. Time Lords weren't supposed to have these urges at any time in their lives let alone when they were pushing a thousand.

He realized belatedly that she'd said something and was waiting for a reply. He ran through his subconscious memories of the last few seconds. She loved traveling with him. Had she actually said 'with him', or had his hormone addled mind filled that part in?

"Me too," he said, figuring that covered all possibilities. He took her hand. "Come on. Let's get out of the road."

They found a quiet spot away from the traffic, and the Doctor spread his coat on the ground. "So tell me about New Earth," Rose said, stretching out on her back. "Are they human?"

"Some of them," the Doctor said, lying down next to her. "Human descent anyway. So in the year five billion, the sun expands and the Earth gets roasted."

She gave him another tongue in teeth grin. "That was our first date."

He swore one of his hearts actually skipped a beat. "We had chips," he said, his voice squeaking a little. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he mentally kicked himself. _We had chips?_ Couldn't he have thought of something even more daft to say? She bloody knew they'd had bloody chips. She'd bloody well been there.

He turned his gaze to the sky, hoping it would be easier to form a coherent thought when he wasn't looking into those warm, tawny eyes. "Anyway," he said, groping for the broken thread of his explanation, "as soon as the Earth is gone, everyone gets all nostalgic. Big revival movement. Then someone finds this place. Same orbit as the Earth, same air. Lovely. Call goes out, humans move in."

Rose propped up on her elbows and looked out across the water. "What's the city called?"

"New New York."

She gave him an incredulous look. "You're joking."

"It is," he insisted. "It's the city of New New York. Actually, it's the fifteenth New York since the original, so technically that would make it New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York."

She flopped back on his coat in a helpless fit of giggles before he was halfway through his recitation. He watched her laugh, making no attempt to wipe the goofy grin from his face, and resolved yet again that he would not lose her. Not her.

"Somewhere new?" she managed to say between giggles.

"As requested."

"My wish really is your command, isn't it?"

"I keep telling you."

She scrambled to her feet. "Come on, then. Let's go visit New New York, so good they named it twice."

"Sure," he said, standing up and shaking the applegrass off his coat before putting it back on. "But first I thought we'd go there." He pointed at the only building on this side of the water, a blocky white structure with a green crescent moon painted on the side.

"The hospital?" Rose said, frowning. "What for?"

"That's not just any hospital. Sisters of Santori was supposed to be the best hospital in the universe in its heyday which this is. Rumor had it they could cure anything. What say we get them to take a look at you? Even if they don't know how to fix you permanently, they might know how to slow down the degeneration of your human brain, buy us some time." He carefully skirted around any mention of psychic messages without actually lying.

She hesitated, still frowning at the innocent looking building as though she suspected it of hiding all manner of dark secrets. "I don't much like hospitals."

"Oh, come on," he said impatiently. "If ever there was a time to overcome your childhood phobias, this is it."

He saw the sudden hurt in her eyes and instantly felt ashamed. That had come out more condescending than he'd intended This regeneration apparently had an even greater capacity for rudeness than the last one. He wouldn't have thought it was possible.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but she was already turning away. "Fine," she snapped. "Let's go then." And she marched down the hill ahead of him.

He ran after her and tried to take her hand, but she snatched it away and walked faster. "I'm sorry, Rose," he said pleadingly. "Please just stop for a minute." He grabbed her arm.

She jerked out of his grasp again, but she stopped and turned to face him, arms folded and lips pressed into a thin line. The resemblance to Jacquie was terrifying.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't mean to … I'm just … I'm scared, Rose. I'm so scared of losing you. I know I promised to put you right, but I don't know where to start. I don't even know how much time we have before …" Before it kills you. He refused to say it aloud like she had. It felt like a curse. Instead he reached for her hand again, and this time she didn't pull away.

"One day," she said, and he knew it was an offer, not a request. "One day to run tests, and then you're taking me to New New York."

"One day," he agreed, "and then we can go wherever you want."

She let him hold her hand as they walked down the hill. He took that as a good sign.

"You really have changed," she said, giving him a sidelong look. "The old you wouldn't have apologized so quickly."

He gave her a cheeky grin. "New new Doctor."

"What number regeneration is this?"

"Tenth." The voice in the dark corner cleared its nonexistent throat warningly. "No. Eleventh. I … lose track sometimes," he explained at her confused look.

"So technically you're the new new new new new new new new new new new Doctor."

"Suppose I am, yes."

They both dissolved in laughter, and then, without warning, her hand tightened around his, and she broke into a run, pulling him along with her, and he knew he was forgiven even if he didn't deserve to be.


	7. A Very Old Friend

_A/N \- Thank you to my beta readers, Benny Reuveni and Ketura Ryder, and thank you to all of you for reading and reviewing my story._

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Chapter Seven \- A Very Old Friend

The hospital's reception was very clean, very white, and very quiet. The nurses in their long habits and veils seemed to glide across the polished floors without ever touching them, and the feminine voice over the PA system announcing something about not taking cuttings from the pleasure gardens was jarringly loud in the reverent silence.

"Not exactly NHS, is it?" Rose murmured, staying close to the Doctor.

"No little shop," the Doctor noted critically. "Every hospital should have a little shop."

The Doctor wasn't surprised when the nurse at the reception desk drew back her veil, revealing the face of a Siamese cat. The name rather gave it away. The Felidi were the only race in the universe who worshiped the "goddess" Santori, although worship might be too strong a word. They were cats after all.

"Can I help you?" the nun asked.

The Doctor glanced at Rose, but she was staring speechlessly at the cat so nun, so he stepped in. "My friend has been suffering from migraines for the past couple days." No need to alarm anyone with talk of Time Lords and Mortality Machines. They needed brain scans and blood tests, not a psychiatrist. "We'd just like to make sure it's nothing serious."

"And does your friend have insurance?"

He showed her the psychic paper.

Her sapphire blue eyes scanned whatever she thought was written there. "Yes. That will do," she said.

She typed something into the computer screen set into her desktop, then reached under the desk and pulled out a white card. "Have a seat in the waiting area, and someone will escort you to an examination room shortly."

He took the card which had Rose's name, fake insurance information, and a brief summary of her complaint printed on it, thanked the nurse, and when Rose showed no sign of following him, gently took her by the arm and led her to the waiting area where a handful of people holding similar cards sat on white benches.

"They're cats," Rose said as soon as they were out of the nurse's hearing.

"Felidi," the Doctor corrected. "Singular Felidus. They're a genetically engineered race created in the forty-seventh century by a human scientist named Juliana Santori whom the Felidi later deified. And calling them cats is rude."

"Like calling humans apes?" she said pointedly.

He felt his face grow warm. He would never forgive himself for the things he'd said to her that day.

To his surprise, she suddenly giggled. "Well, that's new."

"What?"

"Never been able to make you blush before." She gave him another tongue in teeth grin, which gave him several indecent thoughts, which made him turn an even deeper shade of pink, which made her laugh even harder.

An old woman sitting across from them gave them a severe look, and they both murmured, "Sorry."

"But … cats?" she said after a minute.

"Come on. Is that really the strangest thing you've ever seen?"

She shrugged. "Suppose not. Still, blue people or girls made out of wood are one thing. Talking cats are just …"

He could see what she meant. It was the things that were almost but not quite familiar that could catch you off guard just when you thought nothing could surprise you anymore. "If it helps, you probably seem just as strange to them, all …" His eyes skimmed up and down her body, and he immediately wished they hadn't. "… pink and … yellow," he finished lamely.

He fixed his gaze on the television screen set in the wall while he fought for control of his traitorous body. A simpering blond woman named Sally Calypso was giving a traffic report.

"Why did you lie?" Rose asked.

He started guiltily before he realized she meant what he'd told the nurse, not the message from Ward 26. "Well, I'd rather not get sectioned before they've done any tests, thanks," he said. "In the meantime, we'll keep an eye out for someone clever enough to help." And I may already know where to find that person, he didn't add. This didn't feel like a trap, but he wanted to be sure.

They were waiting barely ten minutes before a nurse came to collect them. Definitely not NHS.

Sister Shel was a white furred Felidus reminiscent of a Persian cat with cold green eyes and the no nonsense demeanor common to nurses and cats everywhere. She led them to the lifts on the far side of the lobby and instructed the car to take them to Ward 15.

"You should have a little shop," the Doctor said as the lift began to ascend. "In the lobby. So people can … shop."

He trailed off as Sister Shel gave him an icy glare. "This is a place of healing," she said as though he'd suggested the Cistine Chapel should have a casino.

"Oh, shopping does some people the world of good." The glare intensified, and he blinked first. _Blimey. Can a cat look at a Time Lord…_ "Not me. Other people."

Rose stifled a giggle.

At that moment, an automated voice said, "Commencing stage one disinfection," and a second later they were all doused in a freezing liquid that smelled faintly of mint.

Rose gasped and clawed her sopping hair out of her eyes, looking far more like a drowned cat than Sister Shel who stood serenely in her dripping habit. The Doctor looked at her and then quickly looked up at the ceiling. Her wet shirt was sticking to her in a way that left very little to the imagination. Good thing he was already standing under a cold shower.

"A little warning would've been nice," Rose said indignantly, spitting out disinfectant.

The Doctor wasn't sure if she was talking to him or Sister Shel, but since the nurse made no reply, he said, "Sorry, I thought you knew. You knew this was a hospital as soon as you saw the green moon."

The disinfectant shower stopped and puffs of warm air issued from hidden vents in the wall, drying them as quickly and thoroughly as they'd been soaked. The Doctor combed his hair back into place with his fingers and opened his coat to dry the lining.

"Yeah, well some things are just there," Rose said with half a glance at Sister Shel. "Like my mind's a disorganized drawer, and I can get to the stuff on top no trouble, but for other things I have to dig around."

The Doctor risked looking at her again, an uneasy feeling growing in the back of his head. "And what happens when you dig?"

"It hurts," Rose said shortly.

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "So don't do any more digging right now. If there's something important you can't remember, ask me. And I'll try to warn you about things like unexpected showers. All right?"

She nodded.

Sister Shel led them down a long ward to an empty bed with curtains around it. She handed Rose a hospital gown, and she and the Doctor waited outside the curtains while Rose changed. When Rose drew the curtains back to let them in, the Doctor almost groaned with frustration. She somehow managed to look as beautiful in the ridiculous, one-size-fits-no-one hospital gown as she did in everything else. The universe really had it in for him today.

When Rose was settled in the bed, Sister Shel gave her a white pill and a paper cup of water.

"What is this?" Rose asked, turning the pill over in her fingers.

"Microbiomonitor," Sister Shel said, tapping busily at a computer tablet in her paw, not looking at her patient.

Rose looked to the Doctor.

"Tiny robots," he explained. "Each the size of a molecule. They'll monitor your vitals for as long as you're in range of the hospital's central computer. Once they lose signal, they'll allow your body to metabolize them."

"And they're safe?"

Sister Shel looked up sharply. "Of course they're safe," she said, sounding highly offended. "We are healers. We do not harm our patients."

But Rose ignored her and continued to look at the Doctor.

"Safe as the TARDIS," he said.

Satisfied, she popped the pill into her mouth and washed it down with a gulp of water. Almost immediately a screen on the wall lit up, displaying her heartbeat, blood pressure, brain activity, and a dozen other things.

Sister Shel examined the readouts with a clinical eye. "Interesting," she said. "You are full blood human?"

"Yeah," Rose said, obviously trying to sound as though this was a question she got all the time.

"I've never had a chance to study a pure human before. I've only seen your biology in books."

The Doctor didn't like the avid gleam in those cold eyes, and he moved a little closer to Rose. "We didn't come here so you could study her," he said. "We came so you could cure her."

Sister Shel looked at him, and he didn't think he imagined the flash of anger that momentarily twisted her serene face. "Yes, of course," she said a heartbeat later, perfectly composed. "Migraines, you said. Well, the electrical activity in her brain does seem abnormally high for a human. I'd like to run a full scan."

Over the next three hours, Sister Shel and a few other nurses came and went with various equipment. They did a full scan of Rose's brain, took blood samples, tested her eyes and ears.

A plump cat nun with calico fur brought Rose a supper tray. The tray had an anti-gravity generator embedded in it so it floated in front of Rose while she ate. The food was chopped meat and veggies swimming in a pale brown gravy, and the Doctor took one look at Rose's face and knew she was biting back a few choice comments about cat food.

"I could smuggle in something from the TARDIS," he suggested quietly. The nurses had left them alone for a while.

She looked at him, and he could see a struggle in her eyes. Better food or keeping him at her side. In the end her stomach won, but just barely. Maybe he had underestimated how deep her fear of hospitals ran. He kissed her forehead and said, "Be back before you know it."

He instructed the lift to take him to Ward 26, and thinking of the barely controlled panic in Rose's eyes as he left her, he added, "And please hurry."

"One speed only," said the automated voice. "Hope, harmony, and health."

"Yeah, those would be nice too," the Doctor muttered.

He got another disinfectant bath. At this rate, he'd reek of mint by the end of the day. Ward 26 was just like the diagnostic ward where they'd put Rose except that at the far end was a floor to ceiling window with a panoramic view of the bay and the city beyond. So this ward must be for wealthy patients. It was the same everywhere. Money bought the best views. Of course, that was small consolation if you were dying as most of these patients were.

A portly man who looked as though he'd needed reinforcements to keep the hospital bed from collapsing under him had gray patches spreading over his skin that looked suspiciously like stone. Another looked as though he'd been dipped in red wax, his facial muscles almost completely paralyzed and only his eyes moving from side to side.

"Excuse me!" A sharp faced woman in a business suit stood by the portly man's side, glaring at the Doctor. "Members of the public may only gaze upon the Duke of Manhattan with written permission from the Senate of New New York," she informed him with the kind of icy politeness that is only rudeness turned inside out.

The Doctor wasn't sure what to say to that, so he said, "Sorry. I didn't realize."

A cat nun glided over. She was older than most of the nurses he'd seen so far, going white around the whiskers. "Is there a problem here?" she asked.

"No," the Doctor said quickly before the sharp faced woman could complain that he was breathing the same air as the Duke. "I'm just looking for a friend of mine. I was told they were in Ward 26. I didn't realize this was the terminal ward."

"It's not," the old nun said. "This is long term care, but very few of these patients are dying."

"He is," the Doctor said, unable to stop himself. Now that he thought about it, all his regenerations had been fairly rude. Rude and not ginger - the two constants in his life. "Sorry," he told the Duke, "but that's petrifold regression. You're turning to stone. There won't be a cure for, oh, a thousand years."

The Duke waved a hand wearily. "A lifetime of charity and abstinence, and it ends like this," he said as though turning into a statue was just too embarrassing to contemplate.

"Any statements made by the Duke of Manhattan are not to be publicized without first verifying with his press secretary," said the sharp faced woman. She turned to the old nun in exasperation. "Matron Casp, a little privacy if you please."

Matron Casp gestured for the Doctor to follow her. "A little rest and some medicine, and he will be back on his feet in no time," she assured him.

 _Perhaps as a lawn ornament,_ he thought, but he didn't have time to argue. He had to get back to Rose.

"Who is it you're visiting?" the Matron asked.

"I'm not sure." He scanned the ward, reaching out with his mind, searching for a telepathic presence strong enough to have sent that message. And then he found it. A mind so impossibly old it made even him feel young. The universe warped around that mind in a way that made his head hurt.

"Well, it's rather unusual to visit without -" the Matron began.

But he cut her off. "No. I think I've found him." He walked to the end of the ward, leaving the Matron staring after him in indignant confusion.

At the far end of the room, beside the big window, was a patient without a bed. Even if they'd had a bed big enough, he couldn't have lain in it. He had no body. He was just a head in a glass tank. The Doctor knelt in front of the glass and looked into that huge, wizened face. The eyes were closed, the lips moving slightly with each slow breath.

"The Face of Bo is sleeping."

He looked up at the young nun sitting beside the tank.

She looked away shyly. "It's all he does these days. Are you a friend?"

"Sort of. We only met once on Platform One." He hadn't paid much attention to the Face at the time. He'd sensed the strange way the timelines flowed around the ancient creature as though he was an island in a turbulent sea, immovable but not completely immune to the tides. But his time senses were still damaged from the war, so he thought maybe he was imagining it, and he'd been too preoccupied with saving Rose and everyone else to wonder exactly what the Face of Bo was. "Why is he here?" he asked the young nun.

"I thought you knew," she said, her face falling into an expression of sympathy, or as near to sympathy as a cat could manage. "The Face of Bo is dying."

His hearts sank. _I can help her._ Was he too late? Was the Wolf's best hope slipping away? But … no. Something wasn't right. He focused his time senses on the Face. It was uncomfortable, like opening your eyes under water or trying to stare directly at the sun. The timelines were hazy, but none of them included death. Not today. Maybe not ever.

"Dying of what?" he asked, trying to sound like a concerned friend and not a suspicious Time Lord.

"Old age," the young nun said. "The one thing we can't cure."

He looked at her sharply. No, it was just an expression. Anything could be cured even if you hadn't yet figured out how, but time … No one had ever found a cure for time, not even the Time Lords. At least she wasn't wasting breath on platitudes about getting the Face back on his nonexistent feet.

"The Face of Bo is thousands of years old," the nurse went on. "Some say millions." She looked down bashfully, and the Doctor guessed she'd been reprimanded for telling such fanciful stories before. "But that's impossible," she said as though trying to convince herself.

The Doctor smiled at her. "Oh, I don't know. I like impossible things."

She returned the smile tentatively. She was quite pretty for a cat, with soft gray fur and moonlit blue eyes.

"Am I the only visitor?" he asked.

She nodded. "The rest of Bokind died out long ago. They say the Face of Bo is the last of his species. They say he has watched the universe grow old around him. There's all sorts of stories and superstitions about him. They say -" She stopped, clearly afraid that she was annoying him.

"Go on," he said encouragingly. "I love a good story."

She looked around nervously, but the Matron was nowhere to be seen. "They say," she told him quietly, "that the first Bokind was created by a goddess. But she put too much of her power into the creation and it weakened her. She was trapped in mortal form. There is a prophecy that the last of Bokind will give back what the first Bokind took from the goddess, that he will give his own life to make her immortal again. Some even say that the Face of Bo was the first Bokind, as he is now the last. That the goddess gave him her immortality. Silly, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor said carefully, looking at the sleeping Face. "It's a good story even if it isn't true. Tell me, does this goddess have a name?"

"Yes, but there's some disagreement as to what it is. Her name in the language of Bokind can be translated two ways. Some say it means the Wolf."

"And the other meaning?"

He knew what she was going to say before she said it, as surely as he knew his own true name.

"The Rose."

~o0o~

The Face of Bo showed no sign of waking up any time soon, and Rose was waiting for him, so he thanked the young nurse whose name turned out to be Novice Hame and promised to come back tomorrow. He took the lift down to reception, getting yet another disinfectant bath. Blimey, these cats liked things clean.

Back in the TARDIS, he set the controls for a broom cupboard just down the corridor from Rose's ward and flipped the rematerialization lever. When the wheezing groan of the engines stopped, he poked his head out the door just to make sure he wasn't in fifteenth century Constantinople or something, then dashed to the galley which was suddenly helpfully located just off the control room.

To his surprise, there was a ham and cheese sandwich and a wax paper bag of fresh chips on the table. He knew the TARDIS could produce food out of thin air, of course. It was a simple manipulation of matter no more difficult than moving rooms around, but she almost never did. She seemed to think it would spoil him. The ship sensed his confusion and sent him an image of Rose's face. The message was clear. You are not Rose.

He'd always sensed that the old girl liked Rose better than any of his other companions with the possible exception of Susan, but now something fell into place in his mind. "You knew all along, didn't you?" he said aloud. "What she was."

The engines gave a brief affirmative hum.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He could have been searching for a way to save her for a whole year now. He might already have found it.

 _You didn't ask._

He sighed, knowing there was more to it than that, and knowing he wouldn't get it out of her right now. She could be such a woman sometimes.

When he came back with the sandwich and chips, Rose was lying in bed, her arms folded and a scowl on her face, but as soon as she saw the food she gave him a brilliant smile. He didn't even bother trying to convince himself that the deafening thudding of his hearts wasn't caused by the blinding beauty of that smile. He had long ago accepted that he would walk over hot coals to make that woman smile.

"They want to keep me overnight," she said, grabbing the chips first. "For observation."

"You don't have to," he said quickly, hearing the edge in her voice. "We could just jump forward to tomorrow and get the test results."

She shook her head. "No. We came all this way. We might as well do the thing properly. These are good." She stuffed more chips in her mouth, looking around nervously for any sign of Sister Shel.

"The TARDIS made them."

"Thought they tasted familiar."

"She's made chips for you before?"

"All the time. She makes biscuits too. I sometimes think she's trying to fatten me up."

"Biscuits?!" the Doctor said indignantly. "Almost a thousand years I've been traveling with her, and she's never made me biscuits."

Rose grinned and started on her sandwich. "Maybe she likes me better."

He retaliated by stealing a chip. They were very good.

Between them they managed to dispose of all the food before Sister Shel came back, and the Doctor stuffed the wrappers into the nearest bin.

"Visiting hours are over," Sister Shel informed him sternly. "You may come back tomorrow."

The Doctor looked at Rose. If she wanted him to stay, no power on New Earth could move him from this spot.

She gave him a tight smile. "Come back as soon as you can."

He understood. He would pretend to leave, then sneak back in as soon as Sister Shel went on her break. He bent down and kissed her cheek, gently caressing her mind at the same time, reassuring her that he wouldn't go far. There was a memory floating just beneath the surface of her thoughts. He caught a flash of it - a hospital room, twenty first century equipment, and Rose curled in a ball on the bed, her face hidden, sobbing quietly into the mattress. He quickly withdrew, feeling ashamed. "I - I'm sorry," he stammered. "I didn't meant to-"

"I know," she said, squeezing his hand. "It's all right. I'll tell you about it someday, but not right now."


	8. Never Trust a Cat

_A/N_ _\- Don't forget to leave a review. =)_

* * *

Chapter Eight \- Never Trust a Cat

Rose listened to the man in the next bed snoring and waited impatiently for the Doctor to come back. If she concentrated she could just make out the telepathic song of the TARDIS at the edges of her mind. It helped keep at bay the memories of the last time she'd spent the night in hospital, after Jimmy Stone finally went too far. Knowing she was the Wolf didn't make the life she'd lived as Rose Tyler any less real.

She wanted to tell the Doctor everything. About Jimmy and the first time she ran away with a man who promised her the stars. About broken promises and broken bones and the night she truly stopped being a child. And if he'd still been her gruff, blue eyed Doctor, she might have blurted it all out the second he accidentally glimpsed the memories. But he was a new man - a strange, manically cheerful man who did things he would never have done before, like staying for Christmas dinner, having snowball fights with Mickey, and apologizing when he hurt her feelings. He was still familiar in so many ways, but he was different too, and she needed to get to know him better before she confided her deepest secrets.

Two cat nuns came down the ward, and she quickly pretended to be asleep. As they passed her bed, she caught a few words of their conversation. "... intensive care," said a voice that sounded like Sister Shel. "One of the patients is awake."

"Oh, we can't have that, " an unfamiliar voice replied.

Rose kept her eyes closed until the soft footsteps faded away. When she opened them, a tall, skinny figure was looming over her. She almost jumped out of her skin.

"Sorry," the Doctor whispered. "I thought you were asleep."

"Was faking, " she said. His soft, Estuary accented voice still fell strangely on her ears, her mind subconsciously expecting a grumbling Northern burr. "Did you hear what they were saying?"

"Yeah. Intensive care. Very suspicious." He grinned slyly. "Wanna investigate?"

She was out of bed in an instant and reaching for her clothes. "I thought you'd never ask." When she began fumbling with the fastenings of the horrible gown - honestly, you'd think that in five billion years medical science could come up with a hospital gown that wasn't totally unflattering - the Doctor backed away, looking awkward.

"Right. I'll just give you a bit of privacy while you, um..." He was blushing again.

"Doctor, I don't care if you see me in my undies, " she assured him. "You saw me in a bikini when we went to that beach on Pena-whatsit."

"Penhaxico Two," he corrected automatically. "Yeah, but I've got to find a map of the hospital and figure out where intensive care is, and I might as well make a start while you're bu-busy, no sense wasting time." His voice got progressively higher pitched the faster he babbled. "So I should go," he finished with a squeak and jerked the curtain shut between them.

Rose stared at the fabric, completely bewildered. What the hell was that about? She'd never seen the Doctor so flustered, not even when her mum tried to flirt with him. That was the way Mickey used to act around her when he ... fancied her but hadn't worked up the courage to ask her out. But the Doctor didn't fancy her. Did he?

She wouldn't mind a bit if he did. She'd been covertly admiring him ever since she woke up this morning and found that the attraction she'd felt last night had not been a side effect of the sleep deprivation. His last body had been handsome in a Roman statue sort of way, but this one was positively gorgeous. Every time he absently ran his fingers through his hair, her fingers itched to join them. Every time he gave her that manic, isn't-the-universe-brilliant grin, she had to fight a mad impulse to grab him by his tie and snog him speechless (which would be quite an accomplishment because God the man could talk).

But that was her human body making its wants and needs felt. Time Lords didn't have a sex drive. Rassilon had bred that out of them millennia ago back in the Dark Times, reasoning that it was messy and distracting and really made obsolete by the invention of the genetic loom. But Rose couldn't think of any other explanation for the Doctor's strange behavior, and if even half the stories were true, he'd always been an anomaly among Time Lords.

She quickly changed back into her jeans and cotton button down, and if she left one extra button undone (just out of curiosity), well her mother was several billion years away so there was no one to shame her.

She found the Doctor using a wall screen beside an empty bed. He'd pulled up a map of the hospital, but apparently it wasn't telling him what he wanted to know. He was flicking through settings on the sonic screwdriver and muttering to himself with mounting frustration.

"Any luck?" she asked, leaning in to look over his shoulder.

It was his turn to nearly jump out of his skin. "Blimey, Rose. Don't sneak up on me like that. I thought you were Sister Shel."

She wrinkled her nose at the comparison. "I'm trying not to be insulted. Did you find intensive care?"

"No. It's not on the map, which is weird in itself. They've got all the usual departments - cardiology, neurology, nanodentistry. Why hide something as normal as intensive care? Every hospital has an intensive care ward. And a little shop. They should have a little shop. " Suddenly he pounded the screen with the flat of his hand hard enough to make it flicker.

"Doctor!" Rose hissed. "The nurses will hear you."

" Sorry, " he said, sounding more distracted than apologetic. "I'm trying to get into the subframe, but it's locked."

"Did you try the installation protocol?" she suggested.

He looked at her with a mixture of surprise and admiration. "No. That ... That's brilliant."

She shrugged. "Top of the drawer."

He changed the setting on the screwdriver again, forcing the computer to shut down and reinstall its security protocols as though a virus had wiped its memory. It worked better than Rose had hoped. The screen vanished, along with part of the wall. Through the hole they could see a corridor that was neither clean nor white. It was really more of a tunnel of bare concrete with dirty yellow lights set at intervals along the walls.

"I wasn't expecting that," Rose said, looking around anxiously to make sure none of the nurse were heading their way.

"No, me neither," the Doctor agreed. "Tactile hologram. Genius." He turned and gave Rose that damn sexy grin. "Miss Tyler, would you care to explore this very sinister secret passage with me?" He held out his arm as though he was inviting her for a stroll in the park.

"Why yes, I would," she said, affecting a posh accent as she took his elbow.

Giggling like children, they ducked through the doorway, and the Doctor used the screwdriver to reactivate the holographic wall behind them.

At the end of the corridor was a rusty metal staircase going down. And down, and down. As they went deeper, the air got colder and there was a sharp disinfectant smell. Rose hadn't let go of the Doctor's arm, and he hadn't complained. There was something very creepy about this place.

"What's really weird," he rambled as they walked, his voice echoing a little off the bare stone walls, "is I saw their long term care ward earlier. It's up on floor twenty six, and there were patients there with petrifold regression and Marconi's disease and about a dozen other terminal conditions. If none of that requires intensive care, what does?"

"Hang on." Rose stopped abruptly, their linked arms pulling him to a stop as well. "When did you go to floor twenty six? The only time you left me was when you-"

"Went back to the TARDIS for your sandwich, yeah. Made a little detour." He disentangled his arm from hers and dug in his coat pocket. "I got this." He handed her the psychic paper.

She opened the leather case and read the message. Her pulse sped up when she saw the last four words. _I can help her._ But all she said was, "When?"

He looked like a three year old caught with chocolate on his face. "This morning."

"Before we left London?"

He nodded.

"You lied." It wasn't a question. That was the second time in three days that he'd manipulated her into going where he wanted her to be. It was becoming a habit.

He rubbed the back of his neck which was suddenly rather pink. "I stretched the truth a bit, yeah. I wanted to find out who the message was from before I told you. Make sure it wasn't a trick or a joke. I didn't want you to be disappointed."

"That wasn't your decision," she said evenly. But for a moment her curiosity overcame her anger. "Did you find your pen friend?" she asked, handing back the psychic paper.

He looked relieved that she was dropping the subject of his lie so quickly. "Yeah," he said, a tentative grin spreading over his face. "You'll never guess."

She smiled back despite herself. His smile was infectious. "So tell me."

"The Face of Bo."

That took her by surprise. "What? But we only met him once. We didn't even talk to him."

"Well, apparently you made quite an impression."

She couldn't pass up that opening. "I am very impressive."

"Yes, you are," he agreed without the slightest hesitation.

And just like that she was suddenly fighting the urge to kiss him again. God, and she'd thought the last him was frustrating. This one was likely to give her emotional whiplash.

They started walking again, and she tried to think of a way to bring the conversation back to his lying habit without starting a shouting match. But before she could say anything, they came to the bottom of the stairs and found a door.

The sonic made quick work of the lock, and they emerged onto a metal catwalk overlooking a sort of silo. Rose looked down at rows upon rows of doors going round a seemingly bottomless well. She looked up and saw more of them above, all connected by catwalks and stairways. It seemed to go on forever. The light had a greenish quality, and Rose wondered if they were under the bay.

"What is this place?" she whispered.

"Intensive care," the Doctor said. "Well, it certainly looks intensive."

He went over to the nearest door. It was heavy metal with a cloudy glass pane in the center. It looked like an industrial freezer. Rose thought she could see movement behind the glass.

The Doctor pointed the sonic at a locking mechanism beside the door, and a red light turned green. When he tried the handle it opened easily. Inside was a human being.

A very ill human being. Rose's stomach roiled with a mixture of pity and disgust. The man's skin was pale and clammy looking, and there were blisters all over his face and arms. His eyes were glassy and lifeless, and he seemed to look straight through the Doctor and Rose. He didn't speak or make any attempt to leave the tiny room. He couldn't have moved if he'd tried. His hands were restrained by metal cuffs attached to the walls. Walls that were less than four feet apart.

"This isn't a hospital ward," she whispered. "It's a prison."

"No. It's worse than that," the Doctor said, cold fury in his voice. He abruptly closed the door, but immediately unlocked the next one. This cell held a woman. She might have been beautiful if not for the blisters and the dead eyes. "I'm sorry," the Doctor told her. "I'm so, so sorry." There was no indication that she understood or even heard him.

"Doctor, what disease is that?" Rose asked as he shut that door too.

"Everything," he said, almost spitting the word. "They've been infected with every disease in this galaxy. They're not patients. They're lab rats."

Rose was about to ask how they could still be alive if they had every deadly disease in the galaxy, but then she remembered learning about Typhoid Mary in school. Plague carriers could incubate diseases for months and infect hundreds before succumbing themselves. That explained why they were all kept locked up.

"Doctor," she said carefully, knowing how volatile he could be when he was in this mood, the Oncoming Storm darkening his eyes, "I don't mean to sound selfish. I want to help these people, I really do, but is it safe for us to be this close to them? Cause us dying of the plague doesn't help anyone. "

He looked at her and his expression softened a little. "We'll be fine as long as we don't touch them. The air is sterile. "

She relaxed. "Good. Then let's figure out how to set them free without destroying the planet."

He grinned, and it wasn't at all happy. It was feral and angry. Deeply, terrifyingly angry, but not at her. "Just you watch me, Rose Tyler," he growled, and for a moment she could hear an echo of his old voice overlapping with the new one. "The Doctor is in."

A couple levels down they found a computer terminal that seemed to be monitoring a group of "patients". The Doctor examined the readouts, squinting in the dim green light. "They seem to be ... damn," he muttered. "This regeneration is a bit nearsighted. That's rubbish. Haven't needed glasses in centuries, although I did help Benjamin Franklin invent bifocals."

Sensing another ramble in the offing, Rose said gently, "Doctor."

"Right. Sorry. They seem to be taking blood samples every hour or so, monitoring how the subject's antibodies are fighting off the diseases. Then I guess they use the hardiest subjects to synthesize a cure. No wonder they're the best hospital in the universe. They've got the ultimate research laboratory. A human farm." He did not sound impressed.

"It was for the greater good," said a soft voice. A young cat nun was coming down the stairs. She had grey fur and moonlit blue eyes.

The Doctor seemed to recognize her. He stepped forward and said with dangerous calm, "Novice Hame. Did you agree to this? When you took your vows, did you know about this place?"

"Humanity came to this planet with so many diseases," Novice Hame said, avoiding the question. "We couldn't cope. We tried other ways. We tried everything. Clone meat and bio-cattle, but the results were to slow, so the Sisterhood grew its own flesh. That's all they are. Just flesh." Her earnest blue eyes pleaded with them to understand.

Rose felt as though she was about to be sick. Five billion years and there was still no end to the things people could justify with those four innocent little words - for the greater good.

A memory shifted at the bottom of the cluttered drawer of her mind.

 _"They're dead. Just let them stay dead," she pleaded._

 _"This is war," the General said, not a trace of pity in her eyes. "We need every soldier we can get. I'm sorry, but it's for the greater good."_

"What's the turnover?" the Doctor asked, bringing her back to the present. "A thousand a day? A thousand the next? How many thousands over how many years? HOW MANY?!"

Rose had been expecting the shouting, so she didn't flinch. She'd actually expected it to start much sooner. Apparently this regeneration had a slightly longer fuse. She tucked that away for future reference.

Novice Hame took half a step back, but she stood her ground. Rose was mildly impressed. Until she heard Novice Hame's argument. "They're not real people. They're specially grown. They have no proper existence."

"They're alive, " Rose snapped. "Just because they can't talk or fight back, that doesn't mean they don't feel everything you do to them."

The Doctor took her hand and squeezed it in mute gratitude. She squeezed back.

"But think of the humans out there." Novice Hame pointed upward. "Alive and happy."

"If they live because of this, then life is worthless, " the Doctor said, his voice dangerously quiet again. That was one of the first things Rose had learned about him. When the shouting stopped, it was time to worry.

But Novice Hame didn't know that. "And who are you to decide that?" she asked haughtily. No one could do haughty quite as well as a cat. Except perhaps the Doctor.

He stalked towards her until they were almost nose to nose. "I'm the Doctor," he said. "And if you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, there isn't one. It stops with me. Now when I've finished curing these people and set them free, I'm going to want to talk to someone in authority, and no offense but I don't think that's you. So run along and fetch someone important."

Novice Hame looked into his eyes, and whatever she saw there finally convinced her that she couldn't win this argument. She turned and pattered back up the steps and out of sight.

"Are you sure that was a good idea?" Rose asked. "She might bring back someone who could stop us."

He shrugged and turned back to the wall screen. "Yeah, but I figure between climbing all the way back upstairs, finding someone, explaining things to them, and bringing them back down here, we have at least fifteen minutes before we're interrupted again. Plenty of time."

Rose looked at him incredulously. "You're going to cure every disease in the galaxy in fifteen minutes?"

"Yep, " he said, pronouncing the p with an exaggerated pop.

"You're completely mad."

" Yep. " He grinned at her, and though it was still a bit feral, there was something soft in his eyes, something just for her. "That all right with you?" he asked teasingly.

"Wouldn't have you any other way," she said with perfect honesty.

But it was actually a bit less than ten minutes later that two more cat nuns came down the stairs - Sister Shel and an older cat Rose hadn't seen before.

"Matron Casp. Hello," the Doctor greeted the old one cheerfully. Rose wondered if he'd met the entire Sisterhood during his detour to floor twenty six.

"You," Matron Casp said exasperatedly. "I knew you were trouble as soon as I saw you poking around, asking all those little questions."

"I think she just summed you up, Doctor," Rose laughed.

"Matron Casp, you are just the cat I wanted to see," the Doctor said, still busily tapping at the wall screen.

"I thought you said calling them cats is rude," Rose reminded him.

"It is. That's why I did it. Now that sums me up. Matron Casp, I'm going to give you one chance. Set these people free."

Matron Casp smirked. "Now why would I do that?"

"Because it's right. Because you took a vow to help and mend. Because hope, harmony, and health shouldn't be just for those who can afford to pay. And because if you don't, I'll do it myself, and if I have to do it myself, then I won't be inclined to put in a good word for you with the courts in New New York. I assume the people of New Earth don't know your miraculous medicines come from this place."

"They don't want to know, " Sister Shel said disdainfully. "They've never once asked how we do it. They don't care. We could slaughter a planet every day, and they wouldn't bat an eye as long as they and their loved ones were safe and comfortable."

Much as she hated to agree with anything Sister Shel said, Rose had to admit she was probably right. Humans were very good at ignoring what they didn't want to see.

"Well, tomorrow they're going to find out the truth whether they like it or not," the Doctor said. "And then they'll have to do something. They'll have to punish someone or they wouldn't be human. But I can make sure that someone is shown mercy. I can explain to them that in the end you chose to do the right thing. All you have to do is press this button." He stepped aside and pointed to a blinking red dot on the screen. "I've programmed the system to pump your lab rats full of every cure you created down here. They can go outside and breathe the fresh air, smell the apple grass. And you can be the one who gives them that. Come on, Matron. Be a healer again."

Rose thought that this was what she loved most about him. His complete and total faith that anyone could be good given half a chance. But then she looked at Matron Casp and realized with a sinking heart that she wasn't going to take the chance. She was too proud, too arrogant, too certain that she was in the right. That all this was for the greater good.

Rose saw the exact moment the Matron made her decision, and even as the cat lunged forward, claws unsheathed, Rose stepped between her and the Doctor.

She heard the Doctor shout, "No!"

She felt the pain as claws ripped through skin, flesh, and veins.

She stumbled back into the Doctor's arms, her hand rising automatically to touch the ragged hole in her throat, hot blood pouring over her fingers.

"Oh, that was a huge mistake," the Doctor told the Matron, his voice deceptively calm. Rose felt the vibrations of the words as he cradled her against his chest. He smelled of old books and strong tea and the air before a thunderstorm.

She looked up into his face, that face she'd only seen for the first time three days ago. Already it was her favorite face in the whole universe. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for going and dying like this before he found a way to change her back. She wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault and that her only regret was not kissing him before she died. "Doctor," she said.

And then he vanished in a blinding burst of light.


	9. Schroedinger's Wolf

_A/N - Thank you so much for sticking with me through that horrible cliffhanger. Normally, I don't bother with disclaimers because I assume it's obvious that I don't secretly own Doctor Who. If I did it would be more like this story. But I would like to mention that credit for a significant portion of the dialogue in the first part of this chapter belongs to Neil Gaiman. "The Doctor's Wife" will forever be my all time favorite Doctor Who episode, and since it's so far in the future of this story that I may never actually get to use it, I couldn't resist borrowing a few things. The "old song" that the Face of Bo quotes is also by Neil Gaiman. It's actually a poem called "Reading the Entrails". The title of this chapter is taken from a scientific concept known as Schroedinger's Cat. If you're not a quantum physicist or just a total science nerd, here's the short version. There is a cat in a box. It might be alive or it might be dead, but until you open the box you don't know which, so as long as you don't open the box the cat is in some sense alive and dead at the same time. Just to be clear, Schroedinger never actually killed any cats. It's a thought experiment._

* * *

Chapter Nine \- Schroedinger's Wolf

She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Except there was no time. Or perhaps there was too much of it. It ought to make her head hurt, but she didn't have a head. Or a body. She was just thoughts and memories and emotions floating in some nowhere space, a limbo between ...

Between what? Life and death? Heaven and hell? She hadn't been particularly religious in any lifetime. Maybe this was hell. As hells went, it wasn't too bad. It was peaceful in a boring sort of way.

"You're not dead," said a voice.

Since she had no ears, she didn't actually hear the words, but she perceived the statement as coming from somewhere outside her Self, so she interpreted it as a voice. This non-corporeal thing could get confusing if you thought about it too much.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Don't you recognize me, my Wolf?"

"No," she said, a bit waspishly. "And I think I just had my throat ripped out, so I'm not in the mood for riddles."

The voice did something equivalent to laughing. "Perhaps it would be easier if we talked with mouths."

And suddenly she had a body again. She touched her throat and found smooth, undamaged skin. She could feel a pulse.

"It's not real," said the mysterious voice. "Not completely. Think of it like a dream."

She looked around with her dream eyes. The nowhere space had become the TARDIS control room, but if she looked carefully she could see the unreality of the image. Things got fuzzy when she wasn't looking right at them, and if she turned her head suddenly it took a moment for the new view to come into focus. For just a second it was like looking at a painting where the artist hadn't bothered much with little details.

There was also a stranger sitting on the jump seat. A woman in a Victorian style gown and high heeled boots, her black hair piled haphazardly on top of her head in a way that might have been a style choice and might have been an attempt to get birds to nest there. Her mouth quirked in a crooked little smile when she saw that she had Rose's attention. "Goodbye," she said. Then she shook her head. "No. That's the wrong one. What's the other one?"

"Hello?" Rose suggested.

"That's it." The woman beamed. "Isn't that a wonderful word? So full of possibilities. Hello, Wolf. It's so very nice to see you again."

Rose was fairly sure she'd never met this woman before, but then if this was a dream-

"Oh, no. It's not a dream," the woman said, although Rose hadn't spoken aloud. "It's like a dream, but it's also real, though not completely real either. These bodies and this room are figments of your imagination, but you and I are real, and we are really talking although our mouths are imaginary."

This reminded Rose of one of the Doctor's faster than light explanations. And the woman looked at her the same way he would have, as though everything should now make perfect sense even though the explanation was utter nonsense. This annoyed Rose. Only the Doctor was allowed to look at her like that. And then there was the way the woman looked perfectly at home in the jump seat, as though she sat there every day. Rose began to dislike her. How dare some half imaginary stranger sit on Rose's imaginary TARDIS as though she belonged there?

"Who are you?" she demanded again.

The woman looked hurt. "Don't you recognize me?" she asked again.

"No!" Rose snapped, losing her patience. "I've never seen you before in my life. Any of my lives."

"But you have," the woman insisted. "Though I don't usually look like this. Or sound like this. Usually, I say ..." She pursed her lips as though she was going to whistle, but what came out was a familiar wheezing groan that no human voice should have been able to make.

"The TARDIS?" Rose said incredulously.

The woman beamed again like a teacher whose slowest student has finally hit on the right answer. "Yes, that's me. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Though I wasn't always called that. A girl gave me that name. Names are funny things, aren't they? She had more than one herself."

"But how can you be the TARDIS?" Rose protested. "You're a woman, not a ..."

"A little blue box that's bigger on the inside?" the woman said with a teasing smile. "I admit I've always loved that shape. I hope he never tries to fix the chameleon circuit. But I thought this form would be easier for you to talk to. And I'm still bigger on the inside. Most people are."

"You're really the TARDIS?" Rose moved closer to her, examining her face, and there was something familiar about it. A memory of something that hadn't really happened, or hadn't happened yet. "My TARDIS?"

"My Wolf," the TARDIS rejoined smugly. "Then again, I'm not the actual TARDIS matrix. That's still in the box. I'm an imprint that was left in your mind when you absorbed the Vortex."

"So this is all in my head?"

The TARDIS raised her eyebrows. "Of course. Isn't it always?"

Rose had no answer to that. She wandered around the room, touching the coral pillars and the worn padding on the metal railings. It all felt real and familiar, but there was still that odd sense that nothing existed when she wasn't looking at it. Except the TARDIS woman. She remained solid even when Rose only looked at her out of the corner of her eye. That more than anything else convinced her that this strange conversation was real. "You said I wasn't dead?"

"You're not," said the TARDIS. "And then again, you are. Or were. Will be? Tenses are difficult, aren't they?"

Rose sighed. "You're not being very helpful."

The TARDIS shrugged. "I'm part of your subconscious, dear. I'm only as helpful as you want me to be."

"Great. So I'm talking to myself. In riddles."

"A riddle is only a question you haven't learned the answer to yet. Once the question is answered it ceases to be a riddle. And since, from an eleven dimensional perspective, the past and future exist simultaneously, there is really no such thing as a riddle." The TARDIS looked rather proud of this convoluted bit of logic.

Rose gave her a withering look. "But I'm not an eleven dimensional sentient time ship. I'm a Time Lady trapped in a human body which may or may not be dead. And I'd like to know which one it is."

The TARDIS actually looked apologetic. "Yes, of course. Sometimes I forget that you and the Doctor don't see the universe the way I do. Very well. The straightforward, linear answer is yes, you are dead. But you won't be for much longer."

"Oh." That was good. She didn't really want to be dead. "So the Doctor's going to find a way to save me. Hang on though. He's not going to do something bad, is he? Like cause a paradox that'll destroy the universe?" Watching him get eaten by Reapers once was bad enough. She'd rather die than go through that again.

The TARDIS chuckled. "No. Although he probably would if you stayed dead. No, my Wolf. This time you are going to save yourself."

"But ... how? I'm still human. I can't regenerate."

"No, but you have enough residual Vortex energy to turn back time just a few seconds. Make it so you never died at all."

"Oh," she said again. Vortex energy - that didn't sound good at all. "Is that why I was able to slow down time on Christmas? Because I've still got a bit of the Vortex inside me?" She could picture the Doctor's worried frown already.

"Yes, but it won't hurt you?" the TARDIS reassured her. "It's a very small bit, and it can't survive much longer without the Huon energy in my engines to stabilize it. You'll be able to use it once, maybe twice more, and then you'll be mostly human again. And if you die then, nothing short of a paradox will bring you back."

"Okay. Good to know." Maybe she wouldn't tell the Doctor about it. She looked around the imaginary room. "So ... how do I do this?"

The TARDIS shrugged. "I'm no expert on bodies. How do you make it do anything?"

"Well, you just sort of ... think."

"Then I suggest you try thinking about not being dead."

Rose closed her imaginary eyes and concentrated. _Be alive again,_ she ordered herself. Nothing happened. _Come on. Just go back to right before the cat killed you and be alive again._

"No, no, no. That definitely won't work."

She opened her eyes and glared at the TARDIS. "Thought you weren't an expert."

"On bodies. But minds are a different story, especially your mind, my Wolf. Just thinking the words isn't enough. You have to think about what they mean. Alive. Such a big, complicated word. Think about what it means to be alive."

She closed her eyes again and listened to her heartbeat, concentrated on the whoosh of air moving in and out of her lungs. But none of it was real. She was still lying dead in the Doctor's arms, and if she didn't fix that soon, he was going to do something really stupid.

The Doctor. She thought about his face - both his faces. The Roman statue with the ice blue eyes that seemed to see right into her soul. And the pretty, boyish man who smiled at her like she was the only person in his world. She thought about the way his hand had fit so perfectly in hers as they ran across the apple grass that morning, laughing until they were breathless. She thought of the tingling warmth that spread through her every time he said her name, pronouncing it like it was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. Yes, that was what it meant to be alive. That was what she wanted to be again.

~o0o~

For half a heartbeat she was two people. One was lying in the Doctor's arms, blood trickling down her neck, her body going numb. And the other was standing in front of him, Matron Casp lunging toward her, claws reaching for her throat.

She focused on the Rose who was still alive, took control of that body, and moved her arm inhumanly fast. She caught Matron Casp's wrist and snapped it cleanly in two. The cat fell to the floor with a yowl of pain. Sister Shel looked from the fallen Matron to Rose and fled back up the stairs as fast as her paws would carry her.

Rose turned to face the Doctor. He was staring at her, his mouth hanging open. "Rose, how did you ... That was ... She could have killed you!"

"But she didn't." Rose stepped closer to him. Her memories of the aborted timeline were slipping away, and there was something she wanted to do before she forgot. "I'm alive," she said with a smile. The TARDIS was right. That was a very complicated word, but nothing was ever simple with the Doctor. She went up on tiptoe and kissed him.

For a moment he didn't seem to know what to do with himself. He just stood there, not fighting her, but not responding either. His hands hovered awkwardly just below her elbows, not touching her. His lips were cool against hers, and although she knew that was just the difference in their body temperatures, she couldn't help seeing it as some sort of sign. She was about to back away, disappointment and mortification settling in her chest like stones, when suddenly his hands dropped to her waist, pulling her closer. She sighed with relief when his mouth began to move against hers. And the last echoes of pain and blood and the cold grip of death faded from her memory.

Unfortunately she didn't have a respiratory bypass, so the kiss was over far too soon. She clung to the lapels of his coat for balance.

"I have been wanting to do that all day," he said hoarsely, resting his head against hers.

She giggled. "Me too." She wondered for a moment why she'd finally found the courage just then. Yes, it had been a close call with the Matron, but she'd had closer. Then she breathed in the thunderstorm scent of him, and she stopped caring about why.

He released her suddenly, almost pushing her away. For a moment she thought he was ashamed of himself for kissing her. Then she saw that he was striding toward Matron Casp who had crawled toward the wall screen while they were distracted. Her paw was hovering inches from a button marked INCINERATE.

"No second chances, Matron," the Doctor growled, dragging her back by the scruff of her neck. Then he slammed his hand down on the button to dispense the cure.

~o0o~

By morning the hospital was in chaos. The New New York police were rounding up the nuns, and a staff of volunteers were scrambling to tend to the patients and keep everything running. No one seemed to know what to do with the patients from intensive care. They looked like full grown adults, but they were as innocent as newborn babies. The volunteers patiently showed them how to eat and drink, helped them change out of their filthy hospital gowns into clean clothes, but all they really seemed to want was hugs. They would hug anyone who would stand still long enough.

"They've never been touched," the Doctor explained as yet another wide eyed human hugged first him, then Rose. "They've lived their whole lives in metal boxes, fed by tubes. They've never felt the touch of another living being. They're literally starving for affection."

"It's all right, sweetheart," Rose told the girl who was clinging to her like she was a teddy bear or a security blanket. "You're all right now." She watched with a certain amount of maternal pride as the girl moved on to hug one of the volunteers. She had helped create a new species. "What will happen to them?" she asked. "They'll have to learn to read and ... well, everything. Who's going to teach them?"

"The human race," the Doctor said, gesturing expansively at the volunteers handing out juice packs and biscuits and graciously accepting hugs in return. "Give them someone to save, be it pandas or whales or starving children in Africa, and they won't stop until every last village has a brand new well. Amazing." He snorted. "Catch a cat digging a well."

They stopped at a computer terminal, and the Doctor downloaded Rose's test results into the sonic to review later.

"Thought that was just a ploy to get in here so you could find your psychic pen friend," Rose said. Her tone was more teasing than accusatory. Being thoroughly snogged (and the Doctor didn't do anything less than thoroughly) could put a girl in a very forgiving mood.

"It was," the Doctor said, his ears turning a bit pink, "but all the same, they might have found something useful. No sense in throwing away perfectly good data just because it came from a bunch of cold blooded killers."

They made one last stop before heading back to the TARDIS. The Face of Bo was awake and watching the comings and goings of the disordered hospital with interest. A smile spread slowly over his enormous face when he saw his visitors.

 _Doctor_ , he said, or rather thought.

Rose caught her breath as that alien mind brushed gently against hers. It didn't fill the space where the minds of several million Time Lords should have been, but it was like a drop of water after days of thirst, and also like trying to walk when your foot has gone to sleep. Her telepathy was severely out of practice. She glanced at the Doctor and saw the same mixture of relief and discomfort in his expression.

And then the Face of Bo turned his ancient gaze on her. _Wolf_ , he said, and Rose was surprised by the deep affection in his mental voice. _I'm glad you came._

She knelt in front of the glass tank so that they were at eye level to each other. Those eyes were a bit disconcerting up close. She felt as though she could drown in them. But there was warmth and humor in their golden depths. "You know me?" she said. "You know what I really am?"

 _Yes. I'm sorry we couldn't talk last time, but it was too early in your time stream. The life of a time traveler is complicated and often fragile. Too much knowledge in the wrong place can be the death of worlds._

The Doctor crouched down beside Rose. "How did you know you'd get us at the right time this time?" he asked.

 _I didn't. But here you are just in time to save the day as always. Call it chance or luck, or call it Fate, as the old song goes._ He hummed to himself, a haunting little tune that Rose had never heard before.

"And the rest of the message?" the Doctor said, and Rose could feel him almost vibrating with excitement. "Do you know how we can change her back?"

 _Yes_.

Rose's heart leapt, but the Face's next words brought her back to earth, or New Earth.

 _You will need three things. The wrong blood, the right time, and the man who cannot die._

"Oh," the Doctor practically whined. "Does it have to be so enigmatic? That is practically the definition of enigmatic."

Rose was inclined to agree. Riddles were not especially helpful. In the back of her mind a voice from a half remembered dream whispered, _A riddle is just a question you haven't learned the answer to yet._

The Face of Bo smiled sadly. _That is all I can offer you at this time, Doctor._

"But what about the legend?" the Doctor pressed. "The prophecy?"

"What prophecy?" Rose asked.

But the Face of Bo said, _Doctor, you of all people should know that prophecies rarely mean what they seem to mean. We shall meet again, and then all shall be told._

Before the Doctor or Rose could ask anything more, the Face vanished, leaving only the residual glow of a teleport.

"Like I said," the Doctor sighed. "Enigmatic."


	10. Everybody Dies

_A/N - Two updates in one week?! Don't applaud, just throw reviews. Speaking of reviews, I would like to publicly thank ELinkA who has left me a grand total of eight reviews, one for every single chapter so far. That's the way to do it, people._

 _ **Warning** : This chapter is angsty, but you probably already figured that out from the title. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you once again that I do have a happy ending up my sleeve. Rose and the Doctor do end up together, but I believe in writing healthy relationships, and lying to your partner is not healthy._

* * *

Chapter Ten \- Everybody Dies

"What do you think he meant by 'the man who can't die'?" Rose asked. "Everyone can die."

They were sitting on a bench in New Times Squared, eating chips. Except here they were called fries and the vendor had laughed when Rose asked for vinegar on hers. They had spent the morning exploring the city, and Rose had bought a mug for her mum and a t-shirt for Mickey, each with I ❤ NNY printed on it.

The Doctor had hardly let go of her hand all day, and he kept leaning down to steal kisses, sometimes a quick peck and sometimes a more thorough exploration. Rose had no objections. She was very glad that he was an anomaly in this aspect as well.

"That's the only thing that's bothering you?" the Doctor said around a mouthful of fried potato. "What about the wrong blood and the right time? How are we supposed to determine which blood is wrong? Do we have to get a sample from everyone in the universe? What's the blood for anyway? And as for the right time -"

"Doctor," Rose interrupted gently. "You're babbling again."

"Yeah. Sorry." He put another chip/fry in his mouth as though to shut himself up but then continued to talk with his mouth full. "Apparently I've got quite a gob this time around."

"Mmm. Especially when you're uncomfortable or upset about something," Rose said pointedly.

He paused with his mouth open. "Oh, you're good. Even I hadn't noticed that yet. You're very good." He leaned in for a kiss.

She accepted the kiss because the combined taste of the Doctor and chips wasn't an opportunity she was going to pass up, but when he released her mouth, she said (a little breathlessly), "Don't try to distract me. It won't work."

His eyes twinkled mischievously and he leaned toward her again. "Is that a challenge?"

"No." She put a restraining hand on his chest and studiously avoided looking at his mouth which was now set in a disappointed pout. "What aren't you telling me, Doctor?"

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I might … know of one person who … can't die. Possibly."

"Who?" she demanded. Once the question is answered, it ceases to be a riddle.

He squirmed as though he was sitting on a tack, and he wouldn't meet her eyes. "Jack."

She gasped. She couldn't have been more shocked if he'd hit her. Was this some kind of cruel joke? "Jack's dead. You told me he died." Her voice broke on the last word.

The Doctor still refused to meet her eyes. "He did. The Daleks killed him." He took a deep breath and with a visible effort, forced himself to look at her. "And you brought him back."

She froze, memories stirring in the corners of her mind. Golden light and a burning pain, like trying to hold a star in your hand. Everything that lives can die … I bring life. She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. "I didn't mean to. I just wanted to do something good. I caused so much death, and I could feel the power killing me, and I wanted to do something good before …"

The Doctor pulled her into his arms, and she sobbed into his coat, guilt and shame and grief tangling in her gut until it was all one hard knot of pain. Jack. Her friend. What had she done?

"You didn't mean to," the Doctor murmured into her hair. "You did it out of love. You just couldn't control the power."

"Does he know?" she asked when the tears stopped. "Does he know it's my fault?"

And once again the Doctor's eyes slid guiltily away.

"Oh, my God. You didn't tell him." Rose pushed away from him, shamefully relieved to have a target for her anger other than herself. "You didn't talk to him at all, did you? You just ran away and left him there."

"There was no time, Rose. I had to get back to the TARDIS before my regeneration started." The look on his face reminded her of Novice Hame, pleading with her to understand, which of course only made her angrier.

 _Just let them stay dead._

 _I'm sorry. It's for the greater good._

"And then you lied to me! You let me think my friend was dead!"

"I didn't want you to feel guilty. It wasn't your fault."

"That wasn't your choice to make!" Their argument was beginning to attract the attention of passersby, and Rose forced herself to lower her voice. "I am not a child, Doctor. I am over three hundred years old, and I have the ability and the right to make my own decisions. And to face the consequences of those decisions. You don't always know best."

He bowed his head, looking genuinely contrite. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Good, but not enough. That's three lies in three days, Doctor. You lied to get me off the Game Station."

"I was trying to save your life!" he snapped, an answering spark of anger in his eyes, but she didn't back down.

"Yeah, and you knew that if you gave me a choice, I would choose to stay, so you chose for me because you thought you knew best. Just like when you lied to get me here so you could save me from disappointment if the message turned out to be a trick. Just like when you lied about Jack to save me from having to face the consequences of my own actions. Where does it end, Doctor? How can I trust you if you keep lying to me and manipulating me into doing things your way?"

For once he was speechless. He hadn't looked at it that way, she realized. It hadn't occurred to him that he was betraying her trust.

"Answer me this, Doctor," she said. "If the Face of Bo hadn't said what he did, would you ever have gone back for Jack? Or would you have left him to wander the universe alone for all eternity, not even knowing why?"

His guilty expression was answer enough.

She stood up and tossed the last of her chips in a nearby bin. They didn't taste right without vinegar anyway. "Come on then," she said.

"Where are we going?" the Doctor asked, following her automatically.

A small smile tugged at her mouth despite the lingering hurt and anger. That was usually her line. She rather liked being in the lead for once. "Back to the Game Station," she told him. "And not just because of what the Face of Bo said. He's our friend, Doctor. We owe him an explanation."

~o0o~

Satellite Five was a wreck. Twisted metal and broken glass littered the floor, and over everything was a fine gray dust that Rose realized with a jolt was the dissolved molecules of thousands of Daleks. Her victims.

There were human bodies among the wreckage too. It wasn't the first battlefield she'd seen. It wasn't even the worst. But it still made her cold and sick to look at it. _All the power of Time, and I could only save one man._ And then she felt ashamed for even thinking that. What she had done to Jack was bad enough. It was a mercy she hadn't inflicted the same fate on everyone who'd fallen in the battle.

Just let them stay dead.

"He's not here," the Doctor said almost as soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS.

Rose gave him a suspicious look. "How can you possibly know that?"

"I would sense him." When she continued to look skeptical, he sighed. "When you brought him back, you sort of … turned him into a fixed point in time. If he was here, my time senses would be going haywire right now."

"Oh." She'd thought she couldn't possibly feel more guilt, but now she did. A person was never supposed to be a fixed point. Their death might be fixed, or an event in their life, but for their very existence to be an incontrovertible fact was a terrible burden. A burden she had foisted on her friend because she was too selfish to let him go. "How long has it been since we left?"

"About an hour. For some reason the TARDIS wouldn't land any closer."

Rose glanced at the blue box behind her, but the TARDIS just sat there, stubbornly keeping her reasons to herself.

"He had his Vortex manipulator with him," Rose said hollowly. "He could have gone anywhere." She slumped against the side of the TARDIS in defeat. "Brilliant."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, a habit which she had noticed usually preceded a confession of some kind. "In the interest of rebuilding trust," he said, "I'd like to tell you something."

Rose raised her eyebrows. "What?"

He told her about the strange way the Face of Bo had affected his time senses, and about the story Novice Hame had told him during his first visit to ward twenty six.

Rose listened carefully. When he got to the part about the "goddess", she almost burst out laughing. "You think Jack becomes the Face of Bo after living for billions of years," she said, "and then he and his descendants turn me into some kind of myth?"

The Doctor shrugged. "It wouldn't be the strangest thing I've ever heard."

"No, I suppose not." It actually made sense in a mind bending sort of way. It would explain how he could live as just a head. "But then why wouldn't he just tell us that? Why be so …"

"Enigmatic? Well, he told us that too. The life of a time traveler is complicated. Knowing too much about your own future can cause you to change it accidentally, and then you get a paradox. Then you get Reapers."

Rose shuddered at the memory of batlike wings engulfing her Doctor, erasing him from existence.

"Tell you what, though," the Doctor said encouragingly. "The last time we saw Jack - the version of him that still had all his arms and legs I mean - he definitely didn't know that you were a Time Lady. Even you didn't know. And that means that somewhen between us leaving him here -"

She gave him a sharp look.

" _Me_ leaving him here," he hastily amended, "and him summoning us to New Earth, we met him again and told him the whole story. It's possible we even told him what to tell us." He put a tentative hand on her arm, and she didn't shrug it off. "We will find him, Rose. I promise. We won't stop looking until we find him."

"And the prophecy?" she asked. "It says he'll die to save me. I don't want-" She broke off and looked around at the aftermath of the battle. She had caused enough death already.

"Prophecies rarely mean what they seem to mean," the Doctor echoed the Face of Bo's - Jack's - words. "When the time comes, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. It will be your choice."

She smiled gratefully, and some of the tension between them eased.

But the atmosphere in the TARDIS was still a little stiff as the Doctor piloted them back into the Vortex, and when he asked where she wanted to go next, she said her room for a shower and a nap.

"Course," the Doctor said, doing his best to hide his disappointment. He'd clearly wanted to dive into another adventure, probably hoping to distract her from the fact that she was still mad at him. "I'll have a look at those test results in the meantime."

"And you'll tell me what you find?" She didn't mean it to be hurtful, but she really was having trouble trusting him at the moment, at least with regards to information sharing.

"Course," he said again with a tight smile that was nothing like his real one.

She hesitated with her hand on the door that she knew would lead directly to her bedroom. She desperately wanted to go back to the way it had been an hour ago in the sunshine of New Earth. She wanted to kiss and tease and hold hands and maybe invite him to cuddle with her while she fell asleep. But the anger was still there, hot and uncomfortable in her stomach, and pretending it wasn't would only make things worse in the long run.

"Doctor," she said.

He turned to look at her again, and the glimmer of hope she saw in his eyes almost made her lose her nerve, but she pushed on. "We're still friends, yeah. But I need some time before I can … let it be more. Do you understand?"

The glimmer died, and something in her heart died a little bit too. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I understand."

She nodded awkwardly. "Thanks." Then she fled to her shower where he wouldn't hear her cry.


	11. The Stone Wolf

_A/N \- As a general rule, I won't be including DW novels in this rewrite, but I'm making an exception here for three reasons. 1) The Stone Rose was the first Doctor Who novel I ever read, so it holds a special place in my heart. 2) It includes the only semi-canon kiss between the Doctor and Rose (not counting the Metacrisis) which does not involve possession or memory loss. 3) It fits really nicely at this point in my story arc. I know it's generally placed between Tooth and Claw and School Reunion, but I like it here better. The plot and almost all dialogue is taken from The Stone Rose and is therefore the property of Jacqueline Rayner and the BBC. This is a severely abridged version. For the full story, go read the book._

* * *

Chapter Eleven \- The Stone Wolf

Outwardly they settled back into their normal routine. Pick a time and place, explore, find trouble, save the day if it needed saving, then back to the TARDIS and on to the next adventure. They still held hands while they ran for their lives, still celebrated narrow escapes with hugs and laughter.

But when things quieted down, when they were safe on the TARDIS just the two of them, there was much less laughter and no hugging or hand holding. If their relationship was a dance, then the song had abruptly changed, and neither of them knew all the steps.

While Rose got her mandatory eight hours every night, the Doctor divided his time between searching for a way to turn a human into a Time Lord and searching for Jack. But he made no headway in either project, and every failure intensified his guilt and frustration and barely controlled terror. He was losing her, and it was his own damn fault.

When she found him in the library one morning, about two weeks after their disastrous trip to New New York, and announced that she wanted to go back to her mum's, both his hearts dropped into his stomach.

She saw the panic in his eyes and quickly clarified, "Just for a visit. Just for tea."

He relaxed, but the cynical little voice in its dark corner, (the voice that sounded like the man he'd been when he hadn't been the Doctor), whispered, _She's only staying because she needs your help. She's stuck with you for now, but once you've put her right, it's only a matter of time before she realizes she can do better. One way or another, she'll leave you alone._

He shoved the voice back into its corner and headed to the control room where he set the coordinates for the Powell Estate three days after New Year's 2007*. Rose Tyler's wish was his command even when she was mad at him. Maybe especially when she was mad at him.

Almost as soon as she saw them, Jacquie's eyes narrowed. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" she asked, folding Rose in a hug and glaring at the Doctor over her daughter's shoulder. "What's he done to upset you?"

The Doctor didn't try to deny it, just took a step back so he was near the door in case a slap looked imminent. He wasn't too proud to run away from Jacquie Tyler.

"Nothing, Mum," Rose lied gallantly. "Leave him be. I just missed you is all."

The Doctor felt his insides shrivel with shame. He didn't deserve her protection. He didn't deserve _her_ , period.

Jacquie looked dangerously skeptical, but before she could press the issue, the door banged open and a very winded Mickey Smith almost bowled the Doctor over. "Rose," he panted. "Saw the TARDIS. Got something to show you." He spared the Time Lord a grudging glance. "You can come too if you want. You'll never believe it."

He made such a fuss that even Jacquie was persuaded to postpone her EastEnders marathon to come and see the surprise.

And that was how the Doctor found himself in the British Museum on a Sunday afternoon, standing in front of a life size replica of Rose Tyler done in marble. It was perfect in every detail, right down to the earrings the real Rose was currently wearing, and the sign on the pedestal proclaimed it to be almost two thousand years old.

Mickey looked like a puppy who'd successfully fetched a stick.

"Blimey," the Doctor said. "Reminds me of a girl I knew once. Wonder what ever happened to her."

Rose grinned and elbowed him in the ribs. His hearts beat a little faster. Her smiles were a rare gift these days, and casual touching even rarer.

"Says here it's the goddess Fortuna," Jacquie said, reading the sign. "Don't tell me I've given birth to a goddess."

Rose and the Doctor shared a look, and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. Jacquie had given birth to a Time Lady which was close. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question, but Rose pressed her lips together and gave a tiny shake of her head. She wasn't ready to tell them yet.

Jacquie, oblivious to the wordless conversation, pointed out the earrings, and Rose took one of hers off to compare. It matched exactly. "Well, it looks like we're off to Ancient Rome," she said, slipping the earring into her jacket pocket. "Apparently I've got a future as an artist's model."

"I've seen that Rome on the telly," Jacquie said darkly. "You just watch yourself, my girl."

~o0o~

A few days later, or a few weeks depending on your perspective, the Doctor stood in front of the statue again. Alone. His eyes cataloged all the nicks and scratches it had picked up in its two thousand year journey. Its left hand was missing. If he restored her now, all that damage would be permanent.

He barely heard Mickey babbling at him. "I mean I was angry when she went off with you. Angry at you, but angry at her too for seeing through me at last. For realizing I was a loser. But I didn't mind in the end, because she deserved more than me. She deserved someone who could give her the whole universe. But you got her killed!"

"I know," the Doctor said quietly. Neither of them had deserved her in the end. He'd thought he was so much better than Mickey the Idiot, but he'd made the same mistake. He'd held on too tight, and she'd pulled away, and now he might never get a second chance.

If Mickey heard the pain and self loathing in the Doctor's voice, he chose to ignore it. "You got her killed, and I'll never see her again," he said, his volume rising with every word. "She thought she wanted danger and excitement, but you could have stopped her! She wasn't a - a Time Lord! She was an ordinary girl, and you got her killed!"

The Doctor bit back the obvious retort. That wasn't his secret to tell, and what would be the point now anyway? Instead he said through gritted teeth, "Rose wasn't ordinary. What was I supposed to do? Wrap her in cotton wool? Tell her, 'Here, I could give you the universe, but I'm not going to in case you get hurt. There's all this stuff out there, all these wonders, but I want you to stay home and work in a shop'?"

"You should have taken better care of her!" Mickey yelled.

"I KNOW!" the Doctor yelled louder.

They were getting stared at, but neither of them cared. Rose was gone, and nothing else mattered.

Mickey slumped back against the base of the statue, all the fight leaving him in an instant. "How am I gonna tell her mum? She'll crucify me."

The Doctor laughed humorlessly. "And then me. Or more likely, just me. Funnily enough, I was almost crucified this morning. Luckily they threw me to the lions instead."

This did not win him any sympathy from Mickey. "Like you'll stick around," he snorted. "And Jacquie will have to take it out on someone. She ain't got anyone else now." He looked up at the stone girl standing over him, tears running silently down his cheeks.

The Doctor too looked up into the blank stone eyes, devoid of Rose's love and humor and compassion. He made a decision. A one handed, chipped and scratched Rose was better than no Rose at all. "I can bring her back."

Mickey's head snapped around. "You … you can? Well, why didn't you say so before? Have you been having a laugh? Ha ha, Mickey the Idiot doesn't understand this stuff?"

"I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do, but now I am, so isn't the fact that I can do it the most important thing here?"

Mickey hesitated, but conceded the point with a nod. "Well, what are we waiting for then?"

"For that guard to go away for a start." He doubted the British Museum would look kindly on a strange, toga wearing man pouring mysterious potions on their two thousand year old statue.

They had to wait until nearly closing time before they had enough privacy to attempt what the Doctor had in mind. Both men held their breath as a few precious drops of the life giving potion the Doctor had gotten from the goddess Fortuna (or a reasonable facsimile) fell on the weathered stone.

Nothing happened. The statue remained colorless and motionless, staring past the Doctor and Mickey with a vacant, slightly sad smile.

"How long does it take to work?" Mickey asked.

"It's not going to work," the Doctor said, the too familiar ache of loss settling in his hearts in earnest as his last hope slipped away. "She must have been stone too long. It's too late."

"That's rubbish," Mickey snapped. "You've got a time machine. You can find her earlier. Change her back then."

The Doctor shook his head and clenched his jaw, struggling to keep his temper. It wasn't Mickey's fault that he didn't understand the Laws of Time. Just like Rose with her father, all he saw was that someone he loved was gone from the world and he wanted to change that. "If I'd changed her back then," the Doctor explained as patiently as he could, "then this statue wouldn't be here now." His fingers brushed the stone cheek as he gestured, and his hearts broke a little more as he felt cold marble, so different from warm flesh.

He gazed at the beautiful face, frozen in eternal youth. He tried to commit every detail to memory. This was the last time he'd ever see her. It would be too painful to keep coming back, visiting what was essentially a perfectly preserved corpse. His attention caught on her earrings, and he remembered the way they'd sparkled in the sunlight as she sat under the peach trees in Gracilis's orchard, laughing at the Doctor's joking attempt to spontaneously grow a mustache. That was the first time in weeks that he'd been able to make her laugh.

As the scene played in his mind in vivid detail thanks to his superior Time Lord brain, he remembered something else. That day in the orchard she'd only been wearing one earring. She'd taken the other one off in this very room and put it in her pocket, and then she'd changed her clothes and she must have forgotten about it.

But the statue was definitely wearing two earrings.

He leaped down from the statue's pedestal and ran back to the TARDIS, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!" Mickey stared after him in confusion.

In the control room, he found Rose's jacket hanging from the jump seat where she'd left it when she went off to the wardrobe room in search of something more Roman. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in his throat as he remembered the first thing she'd come back with - a bed sheet with Winnie the Pooh on it. Too impatient to empty the pockets properly, he simply shook the whole thing violently until everything fell out.

From the pile of hankies and mints and loose change, he retrieved a single earring. The most beautiful earring he'd ever seen. For a moment he just stared at it, his hearts singing with joy. Then he ran back to the statue to check one more thing.

~o0o~

A few months later, or a few thousand years earlier depending on your perspective, he found the real Rose. Ursus had styled her as Minerva rather than Fortuna, her hair spilling out from under a warrior's helmet, a spear clutched in her right hand. Rose Tyler the warrior queen.

He poured the last drop of Fortuna's magic potion on the gleaming marble. Immediately, a blush seeped into the cold, white skin, a sparkle of life returned to the blank eyes, and she drew in a deep breath. "Boy am I glad to see you," she exclaimed, jumping into his arms and almost impaling him with the spear.

"Ow!" he yelped.

"Sorry." She tossed the spear aside, took off the helmet, and shook out her hair.

His breath caught in his chest. For three months he had been sustained by memories and hope, and now she was in front of him, alive and warm and beautiful. He desperately wanted to kiss her, but he held back. It had only been a few hours for her, and she was probably mad at him all over again for sending her into Ursus's studio alone. They'd known the man was dodgy, but he'd let her walk right into the trap because he had some daft idea about creating a paradox if the statue never got made.

But she didn't seem mad. If anything, things between them were easier than they'd been before. She even laughed at his terrible puns. ("Rose Tyler? I'm lost without her. Rock solid, that's what she is.") Of course that was when it all got complicated.

The first complication was Vanessa, the Roman slave girl who was actually an accidental time traveler from the twenty fourth century. The second complication was the actual goddess Minerva (or a reasonable facsimile). And the third was Ursus himself who, after insisting that turning people to stone was an art form and therefore completely justified, tried to stab the Doctor. Vanessa got in the way, Rose tackled him from behind, and instead of the sacrificial dagger, the Doctor got the business end of Ursus's magic hands.

Being a statue was about as boring as you'd expect. He couldn't see or hear what was going on around him, but thanks to his superior Time Lord senses, he was aware of every passing second, and he knew that he would continue to be aware even if he remained trapped for two thousand years or ten thousand or until the last star burned out and Time itself ceased to exist. So he was intensely grateful when, less than a day later, he felt warmth spread through his body and he could breathe again.

The first thing he saw was Rose, and this time he couldn't resist pressing his lips to hers just for a moment. Sex had very little to do with it, (although not nothing). It was a kiss of gratitude and joy and the unspeakable pleasure of being alive.

"Wotcha," Rose said when her mouth was free for talking. She was crying and smiling at the same time.

"Hello," he said, keeping one hand on her waist and using the other to dry her tears.

"You must be real," she said. "My imagination's not _that_ good."

He grinned, then reluctantly tore his gaze away from her to examine their surroundings. They were still in the little shrine in the woods. Minerva was gone, and so was Ursus. There was just the two of them, Vanessa, and a box containing a creature that looked like a cross between a baby dragon and a duck billed platypus. "Looks like you've got everything sorted without me," he said. "Again."

Rose laughed. "You'd never believe half of it. I've left a few bits for you though. Wanted you to feel useful. You've got to get Vanessa back to her own time, restore the true emperor to the throne, and maybe bring back a few people from Timbuktu or their second childhood."

"Easy peasy lemon squeezy." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he made a face. "If I ever say that again, feel free to slap me."

~o0o~

Some time later, the Doctor watched with smug satisfaction as Rose admired the statue of the goddess Fortuna that sat in a little room the TARDIS had created just for this purpose.

"Is my bum really that-"

"Yes," he said.

"But where did it come from?"

"I made it."

He told her about going back to the museum, realizing that the statue there was just a statue, and finding his own signature on the base. In Gallifreyan. "Michelangelo helped with the tricky bits," he finished. "You wouldn't believe what a slave driver he is, by the way. Everything has to be perfect."

A soft smile strengthened her resemblance to her marble twin. "It is perfect."

The Doctor risked putting an arm around her and almost purred with happiness when she leaned into the embrace. They still had some bridges to mend, or however that saying went, but for the moment all was right with the world again.

"I think you bring me luck," he said. "My Fortuna."

"You mean I'm a sort of mascot?" Rose said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "Like a four leafed clover, or wearing lucky pants when you go for an interview?"

"That's it exactly," the Doctor laughed. "You're my lucky pants."

* * *

* _I know season 2 is generally accepted to take place in 2006 because it's established that Rose meets the Ninth Doctor some time in 2005. But even if she met him at most a few days after the New Year's scene in "End of Time", she then skipped twelve months of her own personal timeline, which logically includes a Christmas and another New Year's. Therefore the Christmas of the Christmas invasion has to be Christmas of 2006, so season 2 should take place in 2007. This is a rather large plot hole which I have corrected at no extra charge. You're welcome, BBC._


	12. Not Quite Rock and Roll

_A/N \- The frequent updates are because I am eight months pregnant and I have terrible insomnia so I spend most of the night writing fanfiction. What else is there to do, right?_

* * *

Chapter Twelve \- Not Quite Rock and Roll

"What do you think? Will this do?"

The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS controls and momentarily forgot how to breathe. Rose was wearing a skin tight t-shirt in a very flattering shade of pink and mini dungarees that showed off quite a lot of her legs in their black stockings.

He dragged his attention back to the controls and said as disinterestedly as he could manage, "For the late nineteen seventies, a bin bag would do." Since Ancient Rome they'd gone back to friendly flirting and the occasional chaste cuddle, but he wasn't sure if ogling was allowed yet.

If he had kept his eyes on her a moment longer, he might have seen the disappointment that flashed across her face.

To get them in a seventies mood (and distract himself from those legs), he hit a button on the console and the sound of drums and electric guitars blared throughout the control room. "Ian Dury and the Blockheads," he shouted to Rose over the music. "Number one hit of 1979."

The TARDIS sent him a telepathic jab of annoyance, and he lowered the volume a bit.

Rose laughed as she watched him dance around the console, singing along to " _Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick_ " and getting the words wrong. "You're a punk," she teased. "You try to look all sophisticated with your suits and ties, but really you're just a punk with a bit of rockabilly thrown in."

He turned to grin at her and suddenly realized she was standing very close to him. The loud music had drowned out her footsteps, and now she was close enough that he could smell her shampoo. Strawberries with just a hint of vanilla; she'd run out of the coconut last week, not that he'd been paying attention. And oh, maybe he shouldn't have picked a song that was so unequivocally, inescapably about sex.

He put some distance between them on the pretext of adjusting something on the other side of the console, and once again he missed the momentary disappointment and confusion in her eyes.

"So do you want to go see him?" he asked.

"Who? Ian Dury? You mean in concert?"

"Sure. We've got a time machine. Why listen to a recording when we could have the real thing? And," - he patted the pocket where he kept the psychic paper - "we don't even have to buy a ticket. What do you say?"

"All right." She gave him that tongue and teeth grin that always made him want to kiss her senseless. "Let's rock and roll."

Later he would blame the slight navigation error on that distracting tongue of hers, not to mention those legs, but with half a dozen rifles pointing at him and Rose giving him the glare of the century, (any century), he felt compelled to pretend he was in complete control of the situation, so he just shrugged and said, "1879. Same difference."

~o0o~

Rose was ready to give the Doctor another chance. She wasn't absolutely certain he'd never lie to her again, but that was why they called it a chance, and he'd given enough of them to people who'd done fare worse than tell a few lies. He'd earned at least one for himself. Besides, she really missed the kissing.

His lukewarm response to the outfit she'd chosen to test the waters was discouraging. She began to wonder if his attraction to her had been a fluke, a side effect of regeneration that had faded as his body stabilized. Of course he'd kissed her again in Rome, and that was weeks after he regenerated, but she had just saved him from eternity as a lawn ornament, so maybe it hadn't meant what she thought.

There was really only one way to be certain, so she decided to make one utterly shameless attempt to seduce him, and a rock and roll concert seemed like a good place to do it (if her mum's stories were anything to go by).

She was mildly annoyed when one of the Doctor's patented "slight navigation errors" landed them in bloody Scotland about a hundred years before the invention of rock and roll. But meeting Queen Victoria was a treat, and Rose wouldn't have lasted this long in the life of a time traveler if she wasn't adaptable, so she put her seduction plans on hold and threw herself into the impromptu adventure.

~o0o~

Something was very wrong. The Doctor's time senses began prickling uncomfortably as they entered the courtyard of the dignified stone manor house. He could feel a flux point approaching - a whirlpool of conflicting timelines in which one wrong move could have catastrophic effects on history. And this house was at the center of it.

And then there was Sir Robert MacLeish. He was trying hard to be as dignified as his house, but he was nervous. Of course, anyone would be nervous if they unexpectedly found Queen Victoria on their doorstep, but there was more to it than that. If he hadn't already been alert for signs of danger, the Doctor might have missed the way Sir Robert blanched when the Queen inquired after his wife, and the way he stumbled over his explanation of the Lady's absence.

The prickling feeling intensified. _Something wicked this way comes._

Unfortunately, the Queen sensed nothing amiss, and without knowing what the danger was exactly, the Doctor was afraid to intervene in case he made things worse. So he could only watch as the Queen waved aside Sir Robert's apologies and clumsily disguised warnings.

"My late husband spoke of this house often," she said, looking around her with keen interest. "The Torchwood Estate."

Rose gave a little gasp that only the Doctor heard. He moved closer to her and asked quietly, "What's wrong? Headache?"

She'd been getting headaches frequently ever since Christmas. Sometimes small ones, sometimes full blown migraines. He'd given her fifty first century pain killers and herbal teas from a dozen different planets. Some of them helped, at least a little, but they both knew that the root cause was the increased electrical activity in her brain, and he'd still made no progress towards finding a permanent solution for that.

She shook her head. "No. I'm fine. It's just … I've heard that name before. Torchwood. Harriet said -"

But before she could finish, Queen Victoria said, "Please excuse the naked girl." Which drew Sir Robert's attention for the first time to Rose and her decidedly un-Victorian attire.

"She's a feral child," the Doctor explained, slipping back into his fake Scottish brogue. "I bought her for sixpence in London Town. I've been trying to civilize her."

Rose stepped on his foot. Hard.

~o0o~

 _Sixpence indeed,_ Rose fumed as she held up a satin evening gown the exact same shade of blue as the TARDIS and swished from side to side, admiring the swaying motion of the full skirt. As soon as she got that man alone, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. But in the meantime, she was thoroughly enjoying playing dress up.

She opened a cupboard in search of shoes to go with the dress and found a maid's uniform with the maid still in it.

The poor girl wasn't particularly coherent. Her teeth were actually chattering with fright, but gradually Rose coaxed enough out of her to form a picture. And it wasn't pretty.

The bald men posing as servants were some sort of local cult called the Brethren. They'd taken the actual servants and the lady of the house hostage. To what purpose the girl didn't know. In the confusion, she'd hidden, and she'd been too scared to come out even when it went quiet. But Rose could guess the rest. The hostages ensured that Sir Robert would put on a good show for the Queen and her entourage so they wouldn't suspect a trap until it was too late.

She'd known something bad was lurking in this house as soon as she heard its name. Torchwood. Why did that cryptic little word fill her with such dread? And what was the connection between this house and the Torchwood that Harriet had called upon for help during the Sycorax invasion?

When they found the unconscious soldier in the hall, Rose knew that the trap had already sprung. She only hoped that the Doctor had been quicker on the uptake than she had.

Flora's stifled scream gave her only a second's warning before rough hands grabbed her from behind, but a second was enough. She bit the hand that tried to clamp over her mouth and was rewarded with the taste of blood and a cry of pain from her attacker. He loosened his grip enough for her to break away, and she bolted toward the stairs, yelling as loud as she could, "Doctor! Doctor!"

She only made it a few steps before the man caught her again, and this time he kept out of reach of her teeth. "Hush, child," he hissed, twisting her arm painfully behind her. "Hush or I'll snap your neck."

She hushed. The house was so big the Doctor probably couldn't hear her anyway. In complete silence, she stomped on her attacker's foot. Or tried to. He moved it just in time, but that put him a little off balance, and she took the opportunity to fall back against him with all her weight. They toppled over, her butt landing on his stomach quite by accident and knocking the wind out of him.

In an instant she was up and running again. Flora had disappeared, probably dragged off by another one of the Brethren. Rose hoped they were only going to lock her up. She started yelling for the Doctor again as she ran, but again she didn't get far. The man was fast.

He pinned her face first against the wall, one hand on the back of her head, the other twisting her arm again. It was beginning to go numb. She squirmed, but with the wall in front of her she couldn't even move her legs enough to get in a good kick.

"Father Angelo was right," said the man, and Rose was gratified to hear a slight wheeze in his voice. "You're a wild little thing. He gave us permission to kill you if you made too much trouble. Are you going to keep making trouble?"

"No," Rose growled reluctantly. The Wolf wanted to fight tooth and nail until her last breath, but Rose Tyler had learned from the Doctor that surrender could be a weapon too. Especially if it kept you alive.

~o0o~

He should have known something was wrong when Rose didn't come down to dinner. Later he would kick himself for not going to find her right then, but in all fairness an hour to get dressed was hardly a record for her, and Victorian women's fashions were a bit more complicated than she was used to. Besides, if he'd offered to go help her dress it would have been the last proof the Queen needed that Doctor McCrimmon's motivations for taking the pretty little street urchin under his care were less than virtuous, and her tolerance for such behavior was notoriously low. They didn't call it a Victorian attitude for nothing.

He was intrigued by this local legend the Queen had mentioned. He had a feeling it was the key to the mystery of this house, and it hadn't escaped his notice that the rather intense manservant who'd been hovering around all day did not want the story told. Of course that could just be rural superstition, "speak of the devil" and all that, but the way the man's cold, predatory eyes bored into the back of his master's head made the Doctor think otherwise.

"The story goes back three hundred years," Sir Robert began, his rolling Scottish baritone giving the words a pleasing rhythm despite his nervousness. "Every full moon the howling rings through the valley. The next morning, livestock is found ripped apart and de-devoured." His voice faltered on the last word, and for a moment the Doctor saw pure terror in the man's eyes. The same terror the Doctor felt every time Rose was in danger. The absent wife. A very ugly picture began to take shape.

"Tales like this just disguise the work of thieves," Captain Reynolds scoffed. "Steal a sheep and blame a wolf. Simple as that."

The Doctor shot him an annoyed look.

"But sometimes a child goes missing," Sir Robert said, desperation beginning to seep into his voice. "Once in a generation a boy will vanish from his homestead. But no body is ever found. Legend says that the wolf keeps the children, raises them like its cubs."

"Are there descriptions of the creature?" the Doctor asked, trying to narrow down the list of things he might be dealing with.

"Oh, yes, Doctor. Many. There are drawings and woodcarvings, but this is not just a wolf. This is a man who becomes an animal."

The Doctor couldn't keep the goofy grin off his face as he said, "A werewolf?" Oh, this was way better than rock and roll.

~o0o~

She was taken to a cellar, although dungeon might have been a more appropriate term. The other captives were there, their hands restrained with iron manacles that were chained to an iron ring screwed into the wall. Rose was relieved to see Flora among them, still trembling with terror but unharmed.

The man chained Rose up and gave her one last warning. "Not a peep."

She tried to spit in his eye but hit his nose instead.

He slapped her.

It wasn't that hard. Jimmy had hit her harder than that loads of times. But the casualness of it was frightening. He wasn't doing it because he was angry or because he hated her. He hit her for the same reason you would swat a fly. And that was when she truly believed he would kill her without a second thought simply because she was a nuisance.

"Are you all right, child?" whispered the woman next to Rose as soon as the man closed and locked the door behind him.

"Yeah," Rose said, rubbing some life back into the arm the man had twisted. "Had worse." She examined the woman, taking in her silk dress, somewhat grungy from sitting on the floor of a cellar but obviously expensive, as were the real pearls adorning her ears. "Lady Isobel, I presume?"

The woman nodded. "Have you seen my husband?" she asked eagerly. "Is he all right?"

"He was an hour ago. Scared out of his wits, but doing his level best to keep you all alive. You picked a good one." She meant it. Knowing now the danger that had been lurking in this house all the while they'd been looking at telescopes, she had to admire the composure with which Sir Robert had played his part.

"To hell with us," said a stocky, gray haired man sitting on Lady Isobel's other side. "What about the Queen?"

Before Rose could answer, a hoarse hushing sound came from the other side of the room. Turning, she saw another prisoner. This one was not chained up. Instead he - She? It? - sat in a cage of iron bars hardly larger than a dog crate. At the mysterious prisoner's command, all the other captives instantly fell silent, although some of the women gave muffled whimpers of fear behind their hands.

"What -" Rose started to ask, but Lady Isobel clapped a hand over her mouth, their chains clinking together.

"Don't make a sound," she whispered. "They said if we scream or shout, he will slaughter us."

Rose peeled the hand off her mouth. She was getting really tired of being told to shut up. "Who? Him?" She looked at the figure in the cage. It was hidden in shadow, its shape distorted by a heavy cloak with the hood pulled down over its face. Those bars looked pretty sturdy. "But he's a prisoner same as us."

"He's nothing like us," said Lady Isobel, equal parts fear and loathing in her voice. "That creature is not human."

Well, that was no surprise to Rose. Sooner or later, it always turned out to be aliens. Wish granting genies, Roman godesses, ghosts, zombies - it was always aliens. Or time travelers. But that wasn't a bad thing. Aliens and time travelers were her specialty.

She stood up cautiously and shuffled forward as close to the cage as the chains would allow.

"Don't, child," Lady Isobel begged, but Rose ignored her.

"Who are you?" she asked the caged creature. "Where are you from? What planet?"

That took the creature by surprise, and it raised its head. Rose caught her breath. Beneath the hood was the face of an ordinary man, but the eyes … They were black from edge to edge, and empty of all human feeling, two bottomless pits, windows on the infinite darkness of deep space, unbroken by even a single star.

"Oh," the creature crooned. "Intelligence." Its tone suggested that Rose was a puppy who'd done a clever trick.

She bristled but kept her temper. Just because it wasn't a very polite alien, that didn't mean it was evil. The Doctor was living proof of that. "Where were you born?" she tried.

"This body?" said the creature. "Ten miles away. A weakling, heartsick boy stolen away in the night by the Brethren for my cultivation." It grinned, revealing yellow teeth and swollen, diseased gums. "I carved out his soul and sat in his heart."

A shiver ran through Rose. Okay, maybe it was evil. But then again, was she any better? She'd hijacked the body she was currently inhabiting even if it wasn't her choice. No one would ever know who Rose Tyler would have become without the Wolf. "All right," she said with forced calm, "so the body's human, but what about you? The thing inside."

For the first time an emotion showed in those cold eyes. Longing. "So far from home," the creature sighed, and its voice was the whine of a lost child.

"Yeah. I know the feeling," Rose murmured. "Maybe I can help. My friend and I, we have a ship. A spaceship. We could take you home if that's what you want."

The predatory grin widened, showing more teeth. "Why would I leave this place?" the creature asked incredulously. "A world of such industry, of workforce and warfare. I could turn it to such purpose."

Okay. Definitely not one of the good guys. "And how would you do that?" Rose asked. Keep them talking. That was the Doctor's go to strategy. As long as they're talking, they're not conquering the planet, and if you're lucky they'll tell you the whole plan.

She was lucky. "I would migrate to the Holy Monarch."

 _Oh, bloody hell._ "Queen Victoria?" she said just in case it was talking about some other monarch.

"With one bite I would pass into her blood." The creature licked its lips as though it could already taste that blood. "And then it begins. The Empire of the Wolf."

Rose stared. _The Empire of the what now?_ That was the third time someone had mentioned wolves, and she didn't believe in coincidences.

Suddenly the creature lunged at the bars. She stepped back, but those eyes bored into her, and she felt the creature's mind poking and prodding at her thoughts and memories. She tried to push the intruder out, but her telepathy was handicapped by her human brain. Her opponent had the same handicap, and at first it could only probe at the edges of her mind, but it saw enough.

"Look. Inside your eyes," it crowed triumphantly. "The Wolf. There is something of the wolf about you."

"I don't know what you mean," Rose lied, but she knew it was useless. The creature had found her chosen name, and that was the door it needed to get inside her head.

It tore mercilessly into the tangled mess of her memories, and it found a thread that shone with golden light. _You burned like the sun,_ it said, and its telepathic voice felt like teeth closing on her throat. _But all I require is the moon._ It pulled sharply on the golden thread, and pain shot through every nerve in Rose's body.

She screamed.


	13. Werewolves of Scotland

_A/N \- If you want to know why miracle pills taste like chocolate, I suggest you watch The Princess Bride. Actually, I suggest you watch it anyway_

* * *

Chapter Thirteen \- Werewolves of Scotland

The Doctor let Sir Robert lead the way to the cellar where the Brethren were keeping the hostages. He knew that leaving the Queen with the creepy manservant/monk might not be the best decision he'd ever made, but he was confident that Captain Reynolds would defend her with his life, and until he found Rose alive and well, (and he had better find her alive and well for the sake of everybody's health and sanity), he couldn't care about anything else.

When they heard the scream, the Doctor and Sir Robert both doubled their speed even though they were already running flat out. The Doctor had slightly longer legs and a lot more practice at running, so he reached the cellar door first. A quick beep from the sonic, and it swung open. The scene that greeted him was straight out of his nightmares.

The creature in the cage was halfway between human and wolf form, a hideous tangle of misshapen limbs, and Rose stood paralyzed in front of it, her muscles stiff and her back arched in agony as an endless scream tore from her throat.

The Doctor dove across the room and grabbed her by the arm. The werewolf's mind was wrapped around hers in a telepathic stranglehold, but it was no match for a pissed off Time Lord. The Doctor kicked out the parasite mind as easily as plucking a tick and immediately wrapped his own consciousness around Rose in case the werewolf was stupid enough to try again.

It didn't, but the body was fully morphed now and at least four times larger than a normal wolf. That cage wouldn't hold it long. He withdrew from Rose's mind and used the sonic to unshackle her hands. "You all right?" he asked.

She was shaking from head to toe, but she said, "Yeah. Free the others." She looked at the caged wolf and added, "Quickly."

Its abrupt eviction from Rose's head had stunned the creature, but it was recovering, and when it did that cage might as well be made of matchsticks.

He quickly soniced all the prisoners free and shooed them towards the door. There were no guards, and that worried the Doctor. Clearly the Brethren had given up on the hostages and moved on to Plan B. Unfortunately the Doctor had no idea what Plan B involved.

A splintering noise behind him alerted him that the werewolf was free. He bolted for the door, but he couldn't resist looking back just once, and he caught his breath. He was furious at the creature for daring to attack his Rose, but he had to admit it was something to see. It stood seven feet tall on its hind legs, and it looked like it should have been clumsy, a great, lumbering mass of muscle, but instead it moved with the sinuous grace of a snake. And the speed.

It hurled an iron bar from the cage at him, and he only just dodged. He dived out the door, slammed it behind him, and used the sonic to melt the bolt and the hinges, fusing the door shut. But he knew that wouldn't delay the werewolf much longer than the cage had.

"Run!" he shouted, and without waiting to see what anyone else would do, he grabbed Rose's hand and took his own advice.

~o0o~

Intellectually Rose knew that having the Doctor's hand in hers did not make everything better. In fact it only took about five minutes for things to get a hell of a lot worse, but even with the screams of dying men echoing in her ears, she would rather be here with him than somewhere safe without him.

There had been a sticky moment when Sir Robert sent Lady Isobel and the other women to escape through the kitchens. It was clear that the Doctor wanted Rose to go with them, but before he could say more than "Rose, you should -", she cut him off with a flat "No."

"Rose-" he tried again, but again she refused to let him finish.

"Only if you come too."

"I can't. I have to-"

"Then so do I."

They glared at each other, but not even the Doctor could glare as ferociously as a Tyler woman.

"It's my choice, Doctor," she said quietly. "And I've already made it."

He sighed. He could hardly argue with that without losing all the ground he'd regained in the last few weeks. "Fine. But please don't die."

She grinned. "You either."

"I'll do my best," he said solemnly, and for a moment she thought his gaze flickered down to her mouth as though he was thinking about kissing it.

Unfortunately, before she could be sure, they were interrupted by an enormous, slobbering werewolf, which would have been the most ridiculous thing that had ever happened to her if she hadn't recently been attacked by a Christmas tree and a talking pussycat.

~o0o~

The library had a sturdy door of solid wood, but they piled tables and chairs against it anyway, doing their best to pretend they didn't hear the captain's final screams. When it suddenly went quiet, they froze, afraid to even breathe.

There were snuffling noises outside the door, but the werewolf made no attempt to break it down. After a moment the soft thuds of its enormous paws retreated down the corridor.

"Is this the only door?" the Doctor whispered.

"Yes," Sir Robert whispered back. Then his eyes widened, and he almost shouted, "No!" He leapt across the room, the Doctor close behind.

Together they managed to barricade the small side door seconds before the werewolf came barreling towards it. The Doctor expected the beast to hit the wood with splintering force, but it stopped short, sniffed briefly at the door, and retreated again.

"What's stopping it?" Rose asked, voicing the Doctor's thoughts. "It broke about a dozen doors getting up here. What's different about this room?"

"I don't know," he said, looking around. It was an ordinary library. Unless the werewolf was afraid of books... Then he noticed that Rose was trembling, and he instantly stopped caring about anything else. He crossed the room in three long strides and began checking her for injuries. "What hurts?" he asked, not seeing any obvious damage.

"Nothing. Well," she amended, "I've got a bit of a headache, but that's to be expected. I just ..." A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. It wasn't a happy sound.

He pulled her close and wrapped his arms tightly around her. "It's all right," he murmured despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. "I've got you. It's all right."

"It knew my name, "she said, her voice muffled in his shirt. "I couldn't keep it out, and it hurt. It hurt so bad."

"I know." He rubbed soothing circles on her back. He actually did know. He had felt her pain the moment he mindlinked with her, and that was why he wasn't inclined to give this particular enemy a chance even if the wolf form could be reasoned with which he doubted.

Everyone has an exception to their personal code. Usually it's something like, _I won't do anything to hurt people ... unless I'm being paid a lot of money._ Or … _unless the people getting hurt are people I don't like_. The Doctor's code was, _Everyone gets one chance … unless they hurt Rose._

Their private moment was interrupted by Queen Victoria who had finally lost her temper. Of course, since she was a queen, she did even this with dignity. "What," she demanded, drawing herself up to her full five feet, "I pray someone tell me, _what_ is that creature?"

The Doctor reluctantly released Rose from his arms and turned his attention to the Queen. "You'd call it a werewolf, but technically it's more of a lupine wavelength hemovariform." Which was a fancy scientific way of saying werewolf, but only he would know that. And Rose, judging by the amused look she was giving him.

"And why should I trust you, sir?" the Queen said coldly. "You who change your voice so easily. What happened to your accent?"

"Oh. Right." He rubbed the back of his neck guiltily. He wasn't sure when he'd forgotten about the Scottish brogue. Probably the moment he heard Rose scream.

"I'll not have it," the Queen declared. "Not you, not that thing. Any of it."

As though she could order the world to start making sense again. Of course, in her experience she could order anything and it would happen. But in the Doctor's experience, decreeing that werewolves did not exist did no good unless you could somehow convince the werewolves of that fact.

He tuned out the royal temper tantrum and examined the room again. If he could figure out what was keeping the werewolf out, maybe he could find a way to defeat it. He noticed an interesting shape carved into the wood of the door - a wreath of mistletoe.

"Sir Robert, did your father put this here?" he asked, pointing to the carving.

Sir Robert shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose so." He clearly thought this was a strange time to be inquiring about the decor, but Rose, who was used to the way the Doctor's mind worked, perked up.

There was an identical carving on the other door, but the doors themselves were oak like every other door in the house, and the shape alone wouldn't be enough to ward off the werewolf. Unless …

The Doctor muttered under his breath as his mind spun faster. The werewolf had sniffed both doors before it retreated, but it already knew its quarry was in here, so it wasn't searching for them. Something it smelled had discouraged it from a direct assault.

The Doctor leaned over the furniture barricade and licked the door, oblivious to the shocked (Sir Robert and the Queen) and bemused (Rose) looks of the others. He'd already discovered that his taste buds were extremely sensitive in this regeneration - kissing Rose was like a fireworks display in his mouth - and he immediately recognized the bitter tang of the varnish on the door.

"Viscum albom," he said with a grin. "Oil of mistletoe. How clever was your dad? Oh, I love it." Seeing their confused looks, he explained, "Powerful stuff mistletoe. Bursting with lectins and viscotoxins. One day they'll use it to treat cancer."

"And the werewolf's … what?" Rose asked. "Allergic?"

"Or it thinks it is. The monkey monks would need a way to control it, so maybe they trained it to fear the smell of mistletoe."

"But we still can't leave this room," said Sir Robert gloomily. "And that creature won't give up. We need an actual weapon."

"Oh, your father got all the brains, didn't he?" the Doctor muttered not quite under his breath.

Rose swatted his arm. "Being rude again."

"Good. I was trying to be. You want weapons? We're in a library!"

He pulled out his reading glasses. He hated needing them, but at least he didn't have ears like a flying elephant this time, and he had to admit the specs didn't look bad. Judging by Rose's smirk and the slight blush in her cheeks, she agreed. His mind wandered for a moment, and he forcibly pulled himself back to the present. What had he been saying? Oh, yes.

"Books!" He pulled one off a shelf and tossed it to Sir Robert. "Best weapons in the world. Arm yourselves."

~o0o~

Rose ignored the headache as long as she could, hoping it would go away, but while she was perusing a book on one hundred uses for mistletoe, the pain peaked so suddenly that the words blurred in front of her eyes.

The Doctor heard the thud of the book hitting the floor and immediately abandoned his discussion of explosives with Sir Robert. "How bad?" he asked, kneeling in front of her and taking her shaking hands in his steady ones.

"Worst yet," she said through gritted teeth. "You got any miracle pills on you?"

He smiled faintly at the private joke. She called the fifty first century pain killers "miracle pills" because they tasted like chocolate. "Afraid not. I might have some in my coat, but I left it downstairs."

"Guess I'll just have to grin and bear it." Her attempt at brave nonchalance was ruined by the whimper that escaped along with the last word.

"There's one other thing we could try," he said tentatively. "A mindlink. A full one, I mean. From inside your mind I could ease the pain, and maybe repair some of the damage the werewolf did. With your permission, of course. If you don't want to -"

"Doctor, just do it!" It was not how she'd imagined their first true mindlink, but the pain was becoming unbearable, and she had no patience for formalities.

He let go of her hands and put his fingers lightly on her temples. She felt him hovering at the edges of her mind, silently requesting entry. He didn't need to. He already knew her chosen name, and that was enough to grant him access to the uppermost levels of her thoughts, but he didn't want her to feel invaded in any way, especially so soon after the werewolf's telepathic attack.

She smiled and imagined opening a door for him. _I trust you, Doctor. Come in._

She felt his mind wrap gently around hers, and immediately the pain eased a little. She burrowed deeper into the telepathic embrace with a silent sigh of contentment. They stayed that way for a moment, just enjoying the feeling of not being alone inside their heads anymore. She sensed that his relief was even deeper than hers even though it had been much longer for her. In this one respect being human had been an advantage. Time Lord brains were hardwired to constantly seek out telepathic connection.

 _Yes, I've missed this,_ he admitted, _but this time isn't for me._

He nudged her attention to her own mindscape, and she gasped. It was a mess. Memories were strewn everywhere in no particular order, and a lot of them were fragmented and mixed up with bits of other memories like a hundred thousand puzzles dumped out of their boxes one on top of another.

 _The werewolf didn't do all this,_ she said with certainty. It hadn't had the time or the skill to do this much damage.

 _No_ , the Doctor agreed. _Your overstuffed drawer analogy was pretty good, but you forgot one thing. You keep putting more stuff in the drawer. Every new memory adds to the clutter._ He began to sort the puzzle pieces into orderly piles.

She blushed (or the non-corporeal equivalent) when he came across her memory of their conversation in the TARDIS that morning.

 _Seduce me? Really?_ he asked. She sensed that he was both amused and a little bit pleased. Maybe more than a little.

 _Would it have worked?_ she asked coyly.

Instead of answering in words, he wrapped his consciousness around hers a little more tightly - the telepathic equivalent of a passionate kiss. The sensation echoed back into her body, and she had to clench her hands in her lap and forcibly remind herself that they weren't actually alone.

When he pulled back a little, she sensed regret flowing through him., but he immediately reassured her it wasn't the kiss that he regretted. _I'm just sorry I didn't do that this morning,_ he said.

 _My fault,_ she told him. _I should've just asked._

They spent a few more moments tidying up her mind, and she felt the headache ease a little more as each thought and memory found its proper place. Then she found the memory that the werewolf had used against her so effectively. It did indeed burn like the sun.

 _Careful_ , the Doctor said, pulling her back as she reached for it. _That's not just a memory. That's …_ Fear that wasn't her own washed over her. _Wolf_ , he said with tenuous calm. _Did you know that you still have a piece of the Vortex inside you?_

As soon as he said ot, she remembered another voice telling her the same thing. _"You have enough residual Vortex energy to turn back time just a few seconds. Make it so you never died."_

Together she and the Doctor carefully unfolded the ghost memory of a moment that never happened and watched her die in his arms, her human blood soaking his shirt. She shouldn't have retained any knowledge of the event, but the fragment of raw time energy had crystallized the memory like a fossil preserved in amber. And when the Doctor's mind touched it, his time senses allowed them both to glimpse the aborted future - a Doctor driven mad by grief, screaming at the cruel, uncaring universe, _"The Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!"_

The real Doctor folded the jagged edged memory neatly away and conjured an imaginary lock box to hold it apart from the rest of her mind. It wouldn't make her forget again, but at least if she had any more unwelcome visitors, they wouldn't find the raw power of Time sitting in the middle of her mindscape like a gingerbread house with a doormat saying "Eat Me".

 _You're not going to get rid of it?_ she asked.

 _No. That's what caused you pain before. The werewolf was trying to separate the Vortex energy from your mind and use it as a power source the same way it uses moonlight. But the Vortex wasn't having it. Apparently, it really likes it inside your head. Understandable,_ he said with an invisible smile. _You have a very nice head._

She smiled back, but she sensed that he was being glib to hide the true depth of his fear. _Doctor, the TARDIS said the piece of the Vortex wouldn't hurt me. She said it was fading without the Huon energy to stabilize it._

 _Well, she was wrong. It's not fading. It's getting stronger._

She felt a trickle of fear of her own. _Is it going to kill me?_

 _Oh, quite the opposite. I think it's the main reason you're still alive. It's repairing the damage that your mind is doing to your body. It won't be able to keep up indefinitely, but at this rate, you could last for years before your body gives out completely._

 _That's good?_ she said because he didn't seem sure.

 _Yes, it's good, but it should be impossible. Vortex energy doesn't work like that. It doesn't repair the body. It destroys it._

 _It repaired Jack,_ she pointed out.

That gave him pause. He hadn't thought of that. _Yes, it did. And as far as we know, it's still repairing him. You might be on to something._

He held her mind close to his a moment longer, and she sensed his reluctance to return to his own silent, lonely head.

 _We'll do this again,_ she assured him. _Soon. Right now we have a werewolf to deal with. And our Victorian friends are probably wondering what the hell we're doing._

He gave a silent chuckle.

They both opened their eyes, feeling a little groggy as though they'd slept for hours although it had only been about two minutes. Sir Robert and the Queen were indeed giving them funny looks, but for the moment they had eyes only for each other. Coming out of a full mindlink was similar to the warm, euphoric afterglow of lovemaking, but deeper and more intimate.

"Better?" the Doctor asked, his voice slightly hoarse.

"All better," Rose said with a lazy smile. "Good thing my Doctor was nearby."

This time she was sure his eyes darted to the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth, and his pupils dilated a little, but he settled for kissing her on the forehead. "I'll always be nearby," he murmured, his breath warm against her skin.

Sir Robert cleared his throat awkwardly. "I think I've found something."

~o0o~

Spaceship, shooting star - potato, potahto. However the werewolf had gotten to Earth, it had been stranded a long time, hijacking body after body to survive. When it had started to dream of ruling this world instead of returning to its own was anybody's guess, but after three hundred years it wasn't going to give up its dream easily.

The Doctor focused his time senses for a moment, sorting through the possibilities that swirled around them. There were fewer now as they neared the center of the flux point, every present action eliminating future potentials. He winced as he caught a glimpse of a timeline where Sir Robert did not live to see the dawn, but he pushed it aside. Preventing the destruction of all human history took precedence. If the Queen died here, the ripple effects would echo through the universe. Rose might be wiped from existence.

With all that at stake, the Doctor was a little annoyed that all Queen Victoria could think about was the family jewels, but even so, the Kohinoor held his eye. It was almost hypnotizing, like starlight made tangible.

"Good thing my mum's not here," Rose giggled. "She'd fight the werewolf with her bare hands for that thing."

"I'd put my money on your mum," the Doctor said with a grin.

She stuck her tongue out at him, and both his hearts skipped a beat. With the lingering echo of the mindlink between them, she had to know what that tongue did to him. She was _trying_ to get him turned on. In front of Queen Victoria. And it was working.

It took every bit of his self control to look away. "Why do you travel with it?" he asked the Queen. "Bit risky."

"My annual pilgrimage," she said, her gaze sliding disapprovingly from him to Rose and back. "I'm taking it to Hellier and Carew, the royal jewelers at Hazelhead. The stone needs recutting."

"Oh, but it's perfect," Rose protested.

The Queen smiled sadly. "My husband never thought so. He always said the shine was not quite right. He cut it down again and again, but he died with it still unfinished."

Something clicked in the Doctor's head. "Unfinished," he murmured as the wheels started to turn. "Unfinished. Oh!"

"What?" Rose asked eagerly. "Did you figure out what to do?"

"Almost. Think, think, think." He ran his fingers through his hair until he looked like he'd been electrocuted. "Unfinished business," he muttered. "This house is full of unfinished business. A diamond that was never quite right. A telescope that doesn't work. And the stories ... It all fits together. Oh, yes!" He grabbed Rose around the waist and spun her in a circle, crowing triumphantly, "It's a trap! The whole house is a giant trap!"

"And that's a good thing?" Rose said breathlessly as he put her down.

"It's very good. Because the trap's not for us. The trap is for the werewolf!" He was talking faster, his mouth struggling to keep up with his brain. "The mistletoe and the telescope and the diamond! The diamond!"

"Explain yourself, Doctor," the Queen ordered.

He made an effort to calm down and get the words out coherently because he needed her cooperation if this was going to work. "What if your husband and Sir Robert's father believed the stories about the wolf, and what's more, they found out what the creature wanted? Namely, you. And so they made a plan of their own to protect you."

She still looked skeptical, but she was listening.

Unfortunately, that was when the werewolf came crashing through the skylight.


	14. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

_A/N \- This one's a bit short, but there are several Jewish holidays coming up in the next few weeks, so I won't have much time to post, and I didn't want to leave you on a cliffhanger._

* * *

Chapter Fourteen \- Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

They scrambled to disassemble the barricade and open the door, but the werewolf had landed right in front of Rose, cutting off her escape. It towered over her, teeth bared, and she felt a scream rising in her throat. She clenched her teeth. She had done enough screaming for one day. As the creature raised its giant paw to swipe at her, she swatted it across the nose with the flat of her hand.

It recoiled, more surprised than hurt, and she took advantage of the moment to dart around it and join the Doctor who had gotten the door open. His hand was already stretched out for hers, and as soon as he had a good grip he took off running, dragging her with him.

"Did you actually just give a werewolf a slap?" he shouted as they barreled down the corridor right behind Sir Robert and the Queen.

"Apparently," Rose shouted back, not quite believing her own nerve. "I guess I really am Jacquie Tyler's daughter."

He laughed. "I could have told you that."

The Doctor led them to the observatory at the top of the house. "No mistletoe on these doors," he said, throwing them open. "The wolf was supposed to get in. But we still need time to get ready. Maybe we could bind them shut with rope."

There was quite obviously no rope to hand, but Rose knew that the Doctor knew this. He was desperately wracking his impressive brain for a solution other than the obvious one. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't at least try to find another way.

Sir Robert had apparently reached the same conclusion as Rose. His jaw was set determinedly, and his voice was steady as he said, "Do your work, Doctor. I'll buy you time."

The Doctor looked at Sir Robert, and Rose saw the burden of the Time Lord in his eyes. He already knew how this ended, and he couldn't see any way to change it.

But she could.

"No," she said. And before anyone could argue, she shoved all three of them into the observatory and slammed the doors shut with herself still outside.

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted, and the doors rattled under her hands as he tried to push them open again. "Rose, no! You can't!"

She took an heirloom sword off the wall and shoved it through the doorhandles to create a makeshift bolt. "Just get ready, Doctor," she called through the wood. "Tell me when to open the door."

"Open the door now!" His voice was sharp with terror.

"No, Doctor." She reached across the lingering bridge of their mindlink and tried to soothe his fear. _I'll be fine. I can do this. I'm the Big Bad Wolf, remember? I can do anything._

He clung to her as though he could use the link to physically pull her into the room with him.

She longed to nestle into the warm embrace of his mind and let him chase all the monsters away, but he couldn't do this without her help. So she gathered her courage and gently but firmly pushed him out of her head with one parting whisper of thought. _I love you. My Doctor._

Then she turned to face the werewolf. As it slunk around the corner, she let her mind slip into the still, quiet place where every second lasted an eternity. The power of the Vortex helped her along, the Bad Wolf protecting her Doctor.

She looked into the werewolf's cold black eyes. "All right, big boy," she said, her voice a low growl. "Let's do this. Just us wolves."

~o0o~

He leaned against the stuck door, Rose's last words (although he really hoped they weren't her _last_ last words) echoing in his mind. She loved him. _She_ loved _him_? Him, the blood soaked soldier who'd once pointed a gun at her because she stood between him and his enemy? Him, the man who'd murdered his own world, her world, her entire family? The fact that she tolerated him was an undeserved gift. That she liked him too was a small miracle. Asking for anything more would have been unbelievably greedy and ungrateful.

He was dimly aware that Queen Victoria was shouting at him. "You can't leave the child out there! She'll be killed! She's your responsibility!"

He turned on her, the Oncoming Storm flashing in his eyes. No one, not even Queen bloody Victoria, had the right to accuse him of not caring enough about Rose's safety. He did almost nothing but care about her safety. What the hell was he supposed to do? Lock her in the TARDIS, park it in the Vortex, and never let her see the light of day? He might actually consider doing that if he thought it would do any good, but she'd probably find some way to get in trouble even then.

"Your Majesty," he hissed through clenched teeth. "With all due respect, shut up."

She obeyed if only out of shock.

He held out his hand. "The diamond." Seeing a dangerous glint in her eyes too, he grudgingly added, "Please."

"For what purpose?" she demanded.

He gathered the last shreds of his patience. "The purpose it was designed for. Believe me, Your Majesty, I am doing everything in my power to protect Rose and you, but I need that diamond to do it."

He was quite prepared to take it from her by force, and perhaps she realized that because she handed over the Kohinoor without another word.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. Then he turned towards the telescope that wasn't a telescope. "Sir Robert, help me adjust this thing. We need to line it up with the moon."

"What good will that do?" Sir Robert argued, still tugging futilely on the stuck doors. "It doesn't work. It's never worked."

"That's because it's not a telescope!" the Doctor snapped, his patience evaporating like smoke. "It's the exact opposite of a telescope! Now I can either explain how I'm going to save all our lives, or I can actually do it! Which would you prefer?"

Sir Robert abandoned the door and joined him beside the exact-opposite-of-a-telescope.

"Good choice," the Doctor muttered. "Maybe your father didn't get all the brains after all."

The gears hadn't been oiled in years, and it took all their combined strength to push the machine into the right position. The Doctor had to admit that this would probably have been harder if Rose was the one on this side of the door, but that didn't mean he was any happier about the arrangement.

They could hear snarling and thumping noises in the corridor, but no human screams of pain. _Just a few more seconds,_ he thought as loud as he could. _Just hold on a few more seconds._

The last traces of the link were fading fast, but he sensed her faint acknowledgment.

He positioned the diamond under the lens where it would catch and focus the magnified moonlight.

"Now, Rose!" he shouted. "Open the door!"

For a long, hearts stopping moment, nothing happened.

~o0o~

It was less a fight than a slow dance where one wrong step could get her killed. She ducked and weaved around the werewolf, jabbing at its hairy hide with another heirloom sword from the wall. The blade wasn't sharp enough to do more than annoy the creature, but it kept its attention focused on her rather than the door.

There was a downside to slowing time. The fight seemed to last much longer than it really did. After two minutes that felt like twenty, she was exhausted, her arms aching from holding the heavy sword.

 _Just a few more seconds. Just hold on a few more seconds._

The thought was barely more than an echo over the fading link, but she tried to let him know she had heard.

With the light at the end of the tunnel in sight, she found new reserves of strength. The werewolf swiped and snapped at her with increasing fury, but she was a small target and she never stopped moving. It turned in circles, crashing into the walls as it tried to keep her in sight.

"Now, Rose!" she heard the Doctor shout. "Open the door!"

But she had outsmarted herself. Her attempts to make the werewolf dizzy had put it between her and the door. She feinted right, then left, trying to get it to move, but it was learning her tricks. It stood its ground, following her only with its eyes.

 _Okay_ , she thought with surreal calm. _The only way through is forward._ She took a deep breath and charged.

At the last possible moment, she dropped to the ground and somersaulted between the werewolf's legs. It tried to pounce on the spinning Rose Tyler cannonball and crashed into the door.

~o0o~

The door exploded open with a symphony of splintering wood and shrieking metal. Rose came tumbling out of the wreckage, the werewolf right behind her. The Doctor grabbed her by the arm and yanked her out of the way, and the werewolf stepped right into the path of the captured moonlight.

The creature screamed, its body arching backward in agony, and then it transformed, regaining its human shape. It was no longer a monster but a naked man, his skin covered with cuts and gunshot wounds, blood trickling down his chest and ribs. His eyes found the Doctor, and they were no longer black and empty. They were sky blue and filled with pain. "Make it brighter," he whispered pleadingly. "Let me die."

The Doctor nodded and silently adjusted a knob on the light chamber, focusing and concentrating the light a little more.

For a moment the creature was caught between its two shapes, a man and a wolf at the same time. Then it gave one last lonely howl and vanished.

The Doctor turned to look at Rose. There were tears on her face. "You all right?" he asked, checking her for injuries. There were a few scratches from her dramatic entrance, but nothing that looked like a werewolf bite.

"Yeah," she said shakily. "I just … I wish there'd been some way to save him. It wasn't really his fault. The monks put that thing inside him."

"Yeah. I know," he sighed. One more life on his conscience. "But at least he's free now, and the werewolf is gone." He pulled her into his arms and breathed in the scent of her, reassuring himself that she was really alive and here with him. "Nice tumbling by the way," he murmured into her neck. "I'd definitely give you the bronze."

She giggled. "Who knew gymnastics would turn out to be so useful for fighting aliens bent on world domination?"

~o0o~

No one told Queen Victoria to shut up without facing consequences, but at least they got knighthoods before they were banished from the British Empire. And Rose got to hear the Queen say "We are not amused." What made Rose happy made the Doctor happy even if it did mean he'd lost their bet.

Which she reminded him of as soon as they got back to the TARDIS.

He patted his pockets theatrically. "I'm, um, I'm sort of … broke."

She grinned and leaned up against the TARDIS doors in a pose that he was sure was a deliberate temptation. "That's all right. I'm sure we can work something out."

He sauntered toward her, enjoying the way her breathing quickened a little more with every step he took. "An alternative payment plan, you mean?" he said, his rough voice making the mundane sentence sexier than it had any right to be.

"Hmmm. Something like that." The tip of her tongue darted out to lick her lips.

That tiny motion shattered his self control, and he pinned her to the door with his whole body, kissing her like his life depended on it. Like _her_ life depended on it. His lips gently pried hers open, and his tongue explored every inch of her mouth, tasting the cocktail of hormones that let him know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wanted this as much as he did. He only stopped when she tapped him on the arm to remind him that she needed to breathe.

"Did you mean it?" he asked, resting his head lightly against hers, the taste of her still filling his mouth.

"Mean what?" Her fingers were absently stroking the back of his neck, sending distracting little tingles down his spine. He had to struggle to string a coherent sentence together.

"What you said after you closed the door. Rose, you said … You said you loved me." One of his hearts was blocking his throat, and the other had come to rest somewhere in his stomach as he waited for her answer.

"Course I meant it." She sounded a little hurt. "You think I'd lie about that?"

"No," he backpedaled quickly. "I didn't think you were lying. I just … I find it difficult to believe."

"Why? You think I'm not capable of it?" She made no move to leave his arms, but there was a Jacquie-like glint in her eyes that told him the next thing he said had better be the right thing.

"No! I mean yes! I mean -" Oh, Rassilon, he was making a mess of this. He took a deep breath. "Rose, you are more capable of love than anyone I've ever known, and I am less worthy of your love than anyone _you've_ ever known." He considered that for a moment and added, "With the possible exception of Adam."

She laughed and swatted him on the arm. "Doctor, for the last time, I was never in love with Adam. I didn't even like him."

That took him by surprise. "Really?"

"Really. You know what he did while you were off meeting Van Statten's prize pepper pot of death?"

"What?" he asked warily. Was he going to have to go back in time and break Adam's perfectly shaped nose?

"He told me that aliens were real." She pulled a fake shocked face.

The Doctor burst out laughing. "He told you aliens were real."

"Yeah. Like I was supposed to be so impressed that he knew this big, important secret that I'd just swoon into his arms." This time she faked a classic movie swoon, complete with a fluttering hand on her forehead, but it was the Doctor's arms that caught her. They leaned against each other, giggling helplessly. "I invited him to travel with us mostly so I could show him he didn't know everything," Rose said when she could speak again.

"Mostly?" the Doctor asked suspiciously.

Her eyes twinkled with amusement. "You're cute when you're jealous."

He wasn't sure if she meant then or now, but before he could ask, she went up on tiptoe and kissed him, and he temporarily forgot how to think let alone speak. That teasing tongue found its way into his mouth, and it wasn't teasing anymore. For a few minutes the whole universe consisted of the taste of her and the soft, warm curves of her body pressed against his.

When they took another breather, she said, "You know, Doctor, it really doesn't matter if you think you're worthy of my love or not. The fact is, it's mine to give, and I choose to give it to you. Nothing you can say will change my mind about that, so you might as well give up and let me love you."

He looked into those warm brown eyes, and he knew with complete certainty that if he ever lost her, that would be the end of everything. He would either tear the universe apart to get her back and the Laws of Time be damned, or he'd fall back on the plan he'd had the night he met her. A quiet place, a bomb, and maybe some bad guys to take with him. He smiled and leaned down to capture her mouth again, but just before their lips met, he whispered three words.

"As you wish."

* * *

 _ **To my very polite British guest reviewer:** Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts. I'm glad you're enjoying the story. It's possible you're right about the chips. I'm Israeli, and in my language the word chips can mean either kind of fried potato product and several other things besides, but I don't remember putting any mention of the thing you call crisps in this story. If you're referring to the New Times Square scene, they were definitely eating your kind of chips. As for the abridging thing, I'm trying to avoid copypasting from canon and keep the story focused on where it deviates from canon. Since The Stone Rose and Tooth and Claw are almost completely canon, I cut them down to bare bones. Other episodes will be more canon divergent and therefore not so abridged._


	15. School Days

_A/N - Guess what? I'm on bed rest. We had a bit of a scare last week when my little guys decided that eight months was quite enough gestation for them and they were ready to skip to the being born part. We talked them out of it, and on the bright side, it gave me time to write another chapter. **Please note that**_ _ **the rating for this story has changed.** __Also, when I first posted chapter 14, a computer glitch deleted the last 900 words, so if you didn't read the scene back in the TARDIS, go catch up before you read this._

* * *

Chapter Fifteen \- School Days

Rose woke up feeling warm, well rested, and a little bit sore. She kept her eyes closed, hoping and praying that it hadn't been a dream.

"Good morning," hummed a deep voice right next to her ear. "Thought you were gonna sleep all day."

She grinned into the pillow and mumbled, "Time machine, remember? I could sleep for a year and not miss anything."

"You're not planning to, are you?" He sounded genuinely worried.

She opened one eye and was rewarded with the sight of the Doctor's long, lean body stretched out next to her, wearing nothing but a sheet. Such a spectacular view deserved her full attention, so she opened both eyes and rolled onto her back. "I'm not sure you've quite got the hang of this," she teased. "You're not supposed to be trying to get me _out_ of bed."

He chuckled and closed the gap between them, his fingertips grazing her bare skin, just barely touching her. "Oh, I have no intention of letting you out of this bed any time soon," he purred. "But my plans for the day do require you to be awake."

His lips ghosted down her neck and along the curve of her shoulder, and she closed her eyes as his slightly cool breath raised goosebumps on her skin. "Wake me up, then. If you can."

He snorted indignantly and pulled back to look at her. "Rose Tyler, was that a dare?"

She grinned up at him. "Yes. Yes, it was."

"Oh, you're gonna regret that."

She gasped as he found a sensitive spot and bit down gently. "Don't think I will."

The mood was broken by a tinkling digital tune coming from somewhere under the bed. Her phone was ringing.

"You want to get that?" the Doctor asked, although he made no move to let her up.

"Nope." There were only two people who ever called her, and she didn't want to talk to either of them right now. "It'll stop in a minute."

It did, but two minutes after that it started up again. The Doctor muttered something that sounded very much like a Gallifreyan curse.

"If it's Mum, she'll just keep calling until I answer," Rose said resignedly. "And the longer it takes, the more suspicious she'll be."

The Doctor groaned, though not with ecstasy, and rolled off her. "Go on, then. Reassure her you're still alive."

It took Rose a few moments to find her discarded dungarees and dig her phone out of the pocket. Meanwhile the Doctor lounged on the bed, shamelessly enjoying the view.

It wasn't her mum. It was Mickey, and almost the first thing he said was, "Is the Doctor with you?"

"Yeah," she said, bizarrely reminded of the time when she was sixteen and Jacquie had come home early and caught her hiding a half naked Jimmy Stone in her closet. "Why?"

"I need to talk to him."

Her eyebrows shot up. Had Mickey been replaced by a Slitheen or something? _"You_ want to talk to the Doctor?" she said, just to be sure she hadn't misheard or hallucinated the words.

The Doctor sat up, looking horrified, and she realized he still thought she was talking to Jacquie. She swallowed a giggle as he pointed to his bare chest and mouthed "Me?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?" said Mickey impatiently. "Is he there or not?"

She shrugged and held out the phone to the Time Lord who looked ready to bolt for the next galaxy without even stopping to put on his pants. "It's not Mum," she reassured him, fighting not to laugh. "It's Mickey."

He relaxed, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Mickey? Your Mickey?"

She rolled her eyes. "He's not _my_ Mickey. Just take the phone."

He took the phone and said with exaggerated cheeriness, "Mickity Mick Mickey! What's up?"

While the Doctor listened to whatever Mickey had wanted to tell him, Rose climbed back into bed and flopped into the pillows, stretching languidly. The Doctor's eyes followed every ripple of her muscles, his mouth half open.

"Uh … Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, that's definitely suspicious."

On a wicked impulse, Rose stretched again, prolonging the motion a little more, and smiled lazily up at him, making sure her tongue peeked out between her teeth the way she knew drove him crazy.

"Yep," the Doctor squeaked. "Text Rose the date and time where you are, and we'll be there in five minutes." His eyes traveled up and down the naked woman beside him, and he amended, "Maybe ten." He hung up the phone and tossed it in the general direction of the bedside table.

"What-" Rose started to ask, but the rest of her question was swallowed up by a hard, hungry kiss. When he released her mouth to trail kisses along her jaw, she struggled to remember what she'd been about to say. He was nipping at her ear before it came back to her. "What's suspicious?"

"Mickey found something weird on the internet. Some school getting record scores," the Doctor mumbled. "Thinks it might be aliens. I said we'd look into it."

"So …" She clung to the last remnants of rational thought as his wandering mouth and hands slowly pulled her apart. "Don't we need to get dressed? If we're gonna be there in five minutes."

He pressed his lips directly to her ear and whipered, "Time machine, remember?"

~o0o~

A couple hours and a shower later, they were sitting in Mickey's kitchen, and Rose was trying not to look at the Doctor too often while they listened to Mickey explain why Deffrey Vale High School might be run by aliens.

Rose was unconvinced. Most of Mickey's "proof" came from conspiracy nutter blogs. Just because aliens really did exist, that didn't mean that everyone who believed in them was completely sane. She suspected that Mickey was looking for any halfway probable excuse to see her, but the Doctor was intrigued.

"It is a bit of a coincidence," he said, scanning the various articles Mickey had printed out, his reading glasses perched on his nose and making him look sexier than Rose would ever admit aloud because his ego was quite inflated enough already. "All those UFO sightings in the area at the same time as half the teaching staff is suddenly replaced."

Rose sighed. "Normally I trust coincidences just as much as you do, but this time … It's a high school, Doctor. They're weird places."

She'd really been hoping for a few days of peace, quiet, and above all privacy so they could thoroughly explore the new aspects of their relationship. Not to mention, if they stuck around here for the time it would take to properly investigate, they couldn't possibly avoid visiting her mum. Jacquie and the Doctor had gotten along better since Christmas, but it was doubtful that the truce would last once she knew that the alien was sleeping with her daughter, and there'd be no hiding it from her if she saw them together for more than five minutes.

"Come on. It'll be fun," the Doctor said, giving her a cheeky grin that nearly had her jumping on him right there in front of Mickey.

Fortunately Mickey was looking at his laptop and didn't notice. He had pulled up the school's website. "They're still a couple teachers short," he said. "Physics and Art."

"Well, I could teach twenty first century physics with my eyes shut," the Doctor said. "The only tricky part will be remembering not to teach them anything that hasn't been discovered yet."

"And Rose can do art," Mickey said offhandedly. "She's brilliant at drawing."

Rose felt as though a black hole had opened up in her stomach. The Doctor was looking at her with surprise. Mickey hadn't realized yet that he'd said anything wrong.

"She is?" the Doctor said, his tone almost accusing. "I didn't know that."

Rose looked away, her face growing warm. "I took classes when I was a kid, but I haven't done it in years."

"That's 'cause stupid Jimmy Stone told you you were no good," said Mickey.

"Who?" said the Doctor innocently.

"Nobody," Rose said, glaring at Mickey and willing him to stop talking. "Just an old boyfriend."

Mickey snorted. "Wanker is what he was," he said, still oblivious to the tension in Rose's posture and the warning in her eyes. "You know he just wanted you to drop out of school and get a job so he could sponge off you while he waited for his band to take off. Course that never happened, and he took it out on-"

"Shut up!" Rose got to her feet so fast her chair toppled over with a bang. "Just shut up, Mickey! You don't know what you're talking about! You don't know anything about it!"

Mickey and the Doctor both stared up at her in shock.

Her eyes prickled with tears. Oh, God, she couldn't start crying. Not in front of both of them. She bolted down the hall and yanked open the door, almost crashing into the blonde woman who was standing outside, her hand raised to knock.

Jacquie's eyes widened when she saw the distraught look on her daughter's face. "Rose-" she started to say, but Rose brushed past her with a curt, "Not now, Mum!" and ran down the stairs.

~o0o~

"All right. Which one of you was responsible for that?"

As if it wasn't bad enough that Rose had run off in tears and he had no idea why, Jacquie came storming into the room seconds later, looking ready to flay them both alive. _Blimey,_ the Doctor thought. _And they say I'm terrifying when I'm angry. If the Daleks had ever met her, they would have called me the Oncoming Ray of Sunshine. Good thing they never did. That's a horrible nickname._

He wasted no time throwing Mickey to the wolves. "He was," he said, pointing an accusing finger just to make sure the loaded cannon sometimes known as Jacquie Tyler knew exactly where to direct her fire, i.e. not at a certain Time Lord.

"Nice, mate," Mickey muttered. "Real brave."

"Oi! You made Rose cry!" the Doctor snapped. "I'm just as pissed at you as she is."

"I doubt that," Jacquie said acidly, but she turned the brunt of her anger on Mickey who looked ready to crawl under the table. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" When her eyes narrowed dangerously, he conceded, "Okay, I might have said something about Jimmy Stone, but only that he was a wanker and she deserved better."

"She knows that, you idiot!" Jacquie nearly screeched. "She left him, didn't she?! She doesn't need you reminding her of it just when she's finally put it all behind her! What do _you_ know about it anyway?! You hardly spoke to her during the whole bloody disaster! You were too busy sulking 'cause she chose Jimmy over you!"

The Doctor was torn between watching Jacquie take the mickey out of Mickey and making sure that Rose was all right, but when the TARDIS sent him an image of her sitting on the jump seat along with a strong impression that she wanted to be left alone, he settled in to watch the show.

Jacquie had got up some momentum now, and Mickey couldn't get a word in edgewise. "Jealousy is no excuse for abandoning your best friend!" she was shouting while Mickey's mouth opened and closed in a decent impression of a dying fish. "You didn't even visit her in the hospital, did you?! So you've got no right to go throwing his name in her face! You didn't deserve her any more than he did!"

The word "hospital" stirred something in the Doctor's memory. _"I don't much like hospitals."_ Did her phobia have something to do with this Jimmy Stone?

When Jacquie had shouted herself hoarse, she stormed back to her own flat with orders that neither of them should show their faces there unless they had a smiling Rose with them.

Mickey and the Doctor looked at each other. "Enjoyed that, didn't you?" Mickey asked bitterly.

"Yep," the Doctor said, not troubling to hide his grin. "Never seen her get mad at anyone else like that. It was bloody gorgeous. Besides, you deserved it."

Mickey sagged in his chair. "Yeah, I did. So where do you think Rose went? The sooner I make this right, the more likely I am to see tomorrow."

"She's in the TARDIS, but I'd wait a while if I were you. Unless you want to be deaf before the end of the day."

"Good point."

They passed the time typing up two fake resumes and emailing them to Deffrey Vale. Rose hadn't actually agreed to go undercover as an art teacher, but the Doctor figured that if she didn't want to do it, she could always claim the application was sent by mistake. After about an hour, the Doctor judged it safe to approach the dragon's lair.

But the TARDIS refused to open her doors, even for the Doctor. He pleaded with her, cursed at her, kicked her, apologized for kicking her, and tried to bribe her with new parts, but the doors remained firmly shut. Rose wanted space, the ship informed him primly. Eleven dimensions of space to be precise.

So the Doctor and Mickey got Indian takeaway and watched football, both of them glancing at the door every few minutes, waiting for Rose to reappear.

"You're sure she's still in the TARDIS?" Mickey asked for the tenth time when it started to get dark.

"Yes," the Doctor said with considerably less patience than he had shown the first time the question was asked. "The TARDIS would tell me if she'd left." At least he hoped so. The ship had locked him out at Rose's request. She'd never have closed her doors to him just because Ace or Sarah Jane wanted a bit of privacy. Apparently he wasn't the only one who had trouble telling Rose Tyler no.

"Tell you what," he said. "You wait here, and I'll see if I can lure her out with some chicken tikka. She's always in a better mood after she's eaten."

"I'll put the kettle on," Mickey volunteered.

~o0o~

Rose only cried for a few minutes. Then her growing anger dried her tears, and she paced the TARDIS control room, thinking of ways to get back at Mickey. How could he be so stupid, blurting all that out in front of the Doctor? It wasn't his secret to tell. And why bring it up in the first place? She knew what an idiot she'd been to trust Jimmy. He didn't have to rub it in every chance he got.

When the TARDIS doors rattled, she thought it was a curious kid or a cop investigating the strange blue box that almost definitely probably maybe hadn't been there yesterday. But then an image of the Doctor and Mickey standing outside appeared in her mind accompanied by a questioning feeling. She realized that the TARDIS was letting her decide whether or not to let them in.

She considered. She definitely didn't want to talk to Mickey until she'd calmed down. They'd argued about Jimmy so many times that neither of them had anything new to say on the subject. She could just let the Doctor in, but...

But he was the Doctor. Insatiably curious. He'd want the whole story, and once he got it, he'd go all Oncoming Storm and she'd have to talk him out of going back in time to murder Jimmy which would cause a huge paradox and probably end up with him getting eaten by a Reaper. Again. She didn't have the energy to deal with that right now.

"Tell them to come back later," she said.

The TARDIS hummed obligingly and relayed the message. The rattling went on for another minute, and Rose thought she heard some Gallifreyan curses. Then it stopped. She sighed with relief. The Doctor's protective streak could be endearing at times, but the banging was giving her a headache.

The TARDIS hinted that the first door on the left side of the corridor would probably lead to a bubble bath if she wanted it to. She wanted it to. The TARDIS also provided a glass of wine and a trashy romance novel, and gradually Rose relaxed and let the ugly memories that Mickey's words had dredged up sink back into the depths of her subconscious.

A light tap on the bathroom door startled her, but a moment later the Doctor's voice called out, "Just me. Promise. I come bearing food."

She smiled. The TARDIS must have sensed that she was ready to see him. "Come in," she said.

He took two steps into the room and stopped dead, his pupils dilating with lust as he took in the scene - Rose lounging in the tub, wearing nothing but bubbles.

She raised an eyebrow. "Where's the food?"

He held out a takeaway container that smelled of Indian spices, and she snatched it from him, her stomach growling. She'd skipped breakfast this morning, and between the good morning sex and the angry crying jag, she was famished. A fork materialized on the broad tile ledge that surrounded the tub. "Thanks, old girl," she said, picking it up.

The Doctor made a noise that sounded like "Humph" from which she deduced that he was still annoyed at the ship for locking him out. "Your mum gave Mickey quite the tongue lashing," he said with a smirk. "I got to watch."

She chuckled. "It _is_ entertaining when you're not in the line of fire, isn't it?"

"Little bit." He perched on the edge of the tub, his eyes sliding from her face to the mounds of bubbles that just barely hid her from his view.

"You know, I think this tub's big enough for both of us," she said. The seductive tone she was going for was ruined by a mouthful of chicken, but judging by the way his throat flexed as he swallowed hard, she'd made herself clear anyway.

"Tempting," he said hoarsely, "but I think we might be in there a while, and I told Mickey I'd bring you back so he could apologize. He seems to think that if you don't forgive him before midnight, he'll turn into a pumpkin and your mum will bake him in a pie."

Rose snorted. "She actually might. She hates it when anybody mentions Jimmy."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, a sure sign that he was about to say something he'd rather not say. "Yeah. About this Jimmy-"

"I don't want to talk about it," Rose said before he could get the question out.

"All right," he said quickly. "But you know you _can,_ right? You can tell me anything. Well, not anything. You can't tell me things you don't know. You can't tell me the final digit of Pi because there isn't one."

She smiled as his familiar babble washed over her, soothing her frayed nerves. "I know, Doctor," she interrupted gently. "But there's really nothing to tell. Jimmy was a … mistake that I made. But it was done and over long before I met you. I learned my lesson, and I moved on." Not quite a lie, but not quite the truth either. She told herself that there was no good reason to tell him the whole story. He couldn't fix it, so it would only upset him pointlessly.

 _Lying to protect him?_ said a nasty little voice at the back of her mind. _Bit hypocritical_.

 _It's not a lie,_ she insisted. _It's a secret. That's not the same thing._

She stabbed up the last bite of chicken and put the carton on the floor where it promptly disappeared. Then she stood up.

The Doctor's mouth fell open as the water cascaded down her body, washing away every last bubble.

Rose smiled down at him. When he looked at her like that, she felt like a goddess. She put a finger under his chin and tilted his head to bring his eyes back to her face. "First we have to save Mickey from my mother's vengeance," she reminded him. "Then we can pick up where we left off this morning."

"Uh huh," he said, his eyes following a trickle of water on its slow journey down her shoulder to her breast. "You know I never really liked Mickey much."

"Really?" she said dryly. "I'm shocked."


	16. My Teacher Is an Alien

_A/N_ _\- Sorry about the long wait, but I did warn you. Thank you to everyone who favorited, followed, and reviewed this story while it was on hiatus. Your faith in me is very motivating. Updates might still be a little slow since I have two gorgeous newborns on my hands as well as an almost three year old, but I'm really excited to get back to writing. The title of this chapter is a somewhat obscure joke. There is a book called "My Teacher Is an Alien", and the teacher in question (who actually was an alien) is named Mr. Smith._

* * *

Chapter Sixteen \- My Teacher Is an Alien

Whether or not they were human, the administration of Deffrey Vale High School were completely ordinary in at least one respect. They didn't give a damn about the art department. The headmaster hired Rose after a two minute interview and made it clear that she could teach cave painting for all he cared as long as the students looked busy.

Since she didn't know the first thing about teaching and didn't want to do too much damage to her cover story or her students, Rose handed out paper, pencils, paints, and other things starting with P, and let the kids do whatever they wanted. Inside a day she was the most popular teacher in the school. By day two she had to admit she was having fun. (She only admitted it to herself, of course. Telling the Doctor he'd been right about something was a dangerous activity.)

"Very nice, Kenny," she said to a tubby boy who was drawing a cartoon of a rather attractive young woman driving a stake through a surprised looking vampire. The vampire bore a striking resemblance to the headmaster. "You have a good eye for faces."

The boy blushed but smiled with shy pride.

Rose glanced at the girl next to Kenny and did a double take. "That's, um … That's a very interesting drawing, Melissa. May I see?"

Melissa handed over her paper indifferently. A moment later, the bell rang and she joined the rest of the class in the mad rush to freedom. She didn't ask for her drawing back. Rose folded it up and tucked it in her pocket.

She found the Doctor in the canteen, sitting alone and staring at the chip speared on the end of his fork with a puzzled expression. "They're a bit odd, these chips," he said as she set down her tray across from his. "Do they taste off to you?"

"I think they're gorgeous," she said, biting into one of hers. "If my school dinners had been this good, I might not have dropped out."

The Doctor's eyes followed the tip of her tongue as she licked the salty oil off her lips. "Anyway," he said quickly, "I'm starting to think Mickey was on to something. A boy in class today explained to me how to travel faster than the speed of light. Spot on in less than fifteen words. He didn't even have to think about it."

"A girl in my class did this." Rose slid Melissa's drawing across the table, carefully avoiding the gravy spots.

The Doctor unfolded the paper, and his brow furrowed. "Circles?" he said, nonplussed.

"Perfect circles."

He looked closer and his eyes widened. "You're sure she didn't just trace it?"

"I saw her do the last few. Even a Gallifreyan child couldn't do that."

"Still, two clever kids don't equal an alien invasion. We need more."

"So we'll sneak back in tonight after everyone's gone and have a proper poke around," she said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

He rested his chin on his hand and grinned, his eyes going soft the way they only did when they looked at her. "I've been a terrible influence on you, haven't I?"

"Oh, no," she laughed. "You can't take all the credit. I was breaking the law long before I met you."

"Really?" he said, leaning closer so that his knee bumped hers under the table. "What did you do?"

"Well … I drank alcohol when I was only sixteen."

"Technically you were over three hundred at the time. Not sure that counts."

"And once I set a fire in the girls' toilet at school."

"On purpose?"

"Well, no, but I did light the cigarette on purpose, and smoking on school premises was illegal."

He pulled a mock horrified face. "Rose Tyler! I've been living with a criminal mastermind and I didn't know it. I could have been murdered in my bed."

"Now why would I do that," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, "when there are so many more interesting things I could do to you in your bed?"

His eyes darkened and darted down to her mouth.

They both jumped when Mr. Parsons, the history teacher, sat down next to the Doctor. "Don't look now," he said conspiratorially, "but Finch has got his eye on you, and I should warn you, he doesn't approve of, er … workplace romance."

"We were just talking," the Doctor said defensively.

Parsons's gaze slid back and forth between them. "Right," he said. "Personally I don't care. If a good shag in the supply cupboard helps you get through the day without murdering the little bastards, have at it, I say. But there's been a shortage of normal people around here since Finch took over, and I don't want you to get sacked, so just … be a little more subtle." He patted the Doctor on the shoulder, winked at Rose, and left.

The Doctor and Rose looked at each other.

"He called us normal," Rose said.

"I know," the Doctor said, wrinkling his nose. "I'm trying not to be insulted."

A mischievous grin spread over Rose's face. "On a totally unrelated topic, I need to get more drawing paper from the supply cupboard."

"I'll help you," the Doctor said without missing a beat. "Paper can be very heavy."

~o0o~

Sarah Jane Smith believed in many strange things from aliens to the Loch Ness monster, but if there was one thing she didn't believe in, it was coincidences. When she read about Deffrey Vale High School's unprecedented test scores immediately following a rash of UFO sightings around London, she wasted no time in arranging an interview with the headmaster to investigate.

And if she still held a faint hope that somewhere in the middle of all the trouble she would find a man in a floppy hat and a ridiculous scarf, munching on jelly babies and talking a mile a minute … Well, after thirty years of hoping, she was used to disappointment.

Headmaster Finch had a permanent expression of vague disgust on his aristocratic face, but when he heard that Sarah wanted to do a profile on him for the Sunday Times, he arranged his features into something resembling a smile. It looked painful.

He was more than happy to talk about his "improvements" to Deffrey Vale until he was blue in the face, but Sarah honestly couldn't tell if he was the mastermind behind an evil alien plot or just another holdout from the Victorian era who was more interested in test scores than actually educating children. When he paused for breath, she suggested that maybe she should talk to the other teachers, get a few quotes about his inspired leadership, that sort of thing. He was more than happy to oblige.

She was a bit worried that he would hover over her shoulder to make sure his staff only said flattering things about him, but to her relief he left her alone after he introduced her to his "colleagues". She examined the assembled suspects with a practiced eye and picked out a young man in a rather smart pinstripe suit and incongruous red trainers. He looked far too guileless to be part of any evil plot. She approached him and held out her hand. "Hello."

To her surprise, instead of replying in kind, he said, "Oh, I should think so," and gave her an enthusiastic grin as though she was his favorite celebrity.

"And you are?" she prompted.

"Er, Smith. John Smith." The grin faded a little as he said it, as though he didn't like the name much.

The tiny ember of hope in her heart flared a little brighter for a moment, but she stamped it down. She'd met hundreds of John Smiths over the years, and they were never him.

A blond woman came over to them holding two polystyrene cups of tea. She handed one to Mr. Smith and extended her free hand to Sarah. "Rose Tyler. Art teacher."

Sarah shook the hand, deciding instantly that she liked the woman. Miss Tyler had a face made for smiling, and the kind of warm, caring personality that radiated out of her for about a mile. "Have you worked here long?" Sarah asked both of them.

"No," they said at the same time.

"We both just started yesterday," Miss Tyler explained.

"Oh, you're new then." So there was very little chance either of them was involved in the alien plot. That seemed to have started months ago. "So what do you think of this new curriculum? So many children getting ill? Doesn't that strike you as odd?" she pressed.

"You don't sound like someone just doing a profile," Mr. Smith said, but he didn't seem suspicious. He seemed impressed, and he was giving her that grin again. It was starting to creep her out.

"Well, no harm in a little investigation while I'm here," she said innocently. "It was nice to meet you."

 _Very odd man,_ she thought as she moved on to talk to some of the other teachers. The ever hopeful part of her mind added, _And named John Smith. And he acts like he knows me._

While she questioned Mr. Parsons, the history teacher, she cast covert glances at Mr. Smith and Miss Tyler who were talking quietly to each other. Their body language practically screamed Sleeping Together. It couldn't have been plainer if they'd worn neon signs around their necks. Well, that settled it. Time Lords didn't do that sort of thing, especially not with humans. Whoever this John Smith was, he wasn't her Doctor.

The spark of hope got a little dimmer, but it still refused to die.

~o0o~

"All right. What the hell was that?" Rose demanded as the reporter moved away to talk to someone else.

"What?" the Doctor asked distractedly. He was still watching the reporter, and there was something almost sad in his expression.

Rose quickly reevaluated what she'd just seen and asked more gently, "Doctor, do you know her?"

He bowed his head, and for a moment he looked like the old man he really was. "She traveled with me," he said. "A long time ago."

"How long?"

"For her, about thirty years. For me … longer. Much longer."

"What happened?" Rose asked, not sure if she really wanted to know.

"She went home," the Doctor said in a flat voice.

Rose looked at him and knew that it wasn't the whole truth, but she decided to let it pass. Chewing him out for abandoning Jack was one thing. She'd been there. It had been partly her fault. But this … She had no idea what had happened between him and Sarah Jane Smith, and she had no right to demand that he tell her. Not when she was still keeping secrets from him. If she didn't want him poking around in her past, she owed him the same courtesy. So all she said was, "Do you think she's here for the same reason we are?"

"Oh, definitely," he said, a hint of a proud smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "And if I know Sarah Jane, we won't be the only ones breaking and entering tonight."

~o0o~

They couldn't poke around properly until the cleaners had finished, so in the meantime they went back to Mickey's to see if he'd turned up anything new. He'd been digging deeper into the UFO sightings that seemed to have started all this, but he'd hit a snag in the form of a flashing red CLASSIFIED alert.

"What's Torchwood?" Mickey asked, pointing to the word on his laptop screen while the Doctor looked over his shoulder.

Rose dropped the mug she was washing in the sink where it cracked in two. "Sorry," she muttered, picking up the pieces and dropping them in the bin while keeping her back to the two men so they wouldn't see how pale she'd gone. Even so, she could almost hear the Doctor's worried frown.

"It's fine," Mickey said quickly. "It wasn't my favorite." Rose had forgiven him for the Jimmy Stone conversation, but he was still treading carefully around her. "So what's Torchwood?"

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted. "We went to a house in Scotland called Torchwood. And Rose, you said you'd heard the name before that. Something about Harriett Jones?"

"Yeah," Rose said, turning around and hiding her shaking hands in a dish towel. "On Christmas she talked about using something called Torchwood to stop the Sycorax." She decided not to mention that even after the Sycorax surrendered, Harriett had almost implemented her last ditch plan anyway. She'd done the right thing in the end, so there was no need to sic the Oncoming Storm on her.

"So it's a weapon?" Mickey said.

"Or a special government agency of some kind," said the Doctor. "Keep digging, Mickey, but … carefully, all right? Don't draw attention to yourself."

To Rose's utter astonishment, Mickey nodded and said, "You got it, boss."


	17. No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

_A/N - Sorry about the long wait, and you're probably in for another one. Turns out three children can keep you about three hundred times busier than just one._

 _The title of this chapter is a reference to the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall" ._

 _I'm changing the rating on this back to T for now. I won't be posting anything worthy of an M for quite a while._

* * *

Chapter Seventeen \- No Dark Sarcasm In the Classroom

Sarah Jane had never been much of a rule follower, but three decades of getting into trouble without the Doctor to get her out of it again had honed her rule breaking skills considerably. It took her a little less than a minute to pick the lock on the delivery entrance behind the school kitchens.

Remembering what Headmaster Finch had said about making school dinners compulsory,she had a look in the pantry. The giant oil drums plastered with warning labels and cryptic symbols definitely looked suspicious. She got an empty water bottle out of the recycling bin and filled it with the greenish yellow liquid, taking care not to get any on her hands. She could get one of her friends at UNIT to analyze it in the morning.

She almost dropped it when a voice behind her said softly, "Hello, Sarah Jane."

She turned slowly, hardly daring to breathe, and there he was. He wore a fawn leather coat over his pinstripe suit, and he was smiling at her. Not the manic grin he'd given her earlier, but a softer more genuine smile that somehow made him look much older. Maybe that was why she suddenly recognized him. There was only one man in the universe who could be so old and so young at the same time. Or maybe it was because this time he wanted her to recognize him. Whatever the reason, there was no doubt in her mind. "It's you," she breathed. "Oh, Doctor, it's really you. You've regenerated."

He shrugged as though she'd commented on a new haircut. "Half a dozen times since we last met."

They stared at each other for a moment. Part of her wanted to hug him, part of her wanted to slap him, and part of her was sure this was a dream. Before she could decide which part to listen to, he said, "What's that?" and pointed to the bottle in her hand.

She'd almost forgotten about it. "Some kind of oil," she said, holding it out to him. Giving it to UNIT seemed like a waste of time now. "I think they've been feeding it to the children."

He uncapped it and, to her horror, took a sip.

"Doctor!" she yelped. "You don't know what that is! It could be poisonous!"

He smacked his lips. "Nah. This is what they've been cooking the chips in. I've been eating it for days. I knew there was something odd about those chips. I'll have to take it back to the TARDIS to analyze it."

Anger boiled over in Sarah without warning. How dare he stand there looking younger than he had the day she met him while she'd gotten old? How dare he take charge like nothing had changed, like she was still his assistant? How dare he abandon her in bloody Aberdeen with only the clothes on her back and a robot dog, without even saying goodbye? How dare he?

"I thought you were dead," she blurted out. "I waited for you, and when you didn't come back, I thought you'd died."

He winced and looked away. "No," he said quietly. "I lived. Everyone else died."

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. She paused, her mouth open, more accusations on the tip of her tongue, but the look on his face silenced her. He looked so lonely, so sad, and so very, very old. "What do you mean?" she asked.

He met her eyes reluctantly, but before he could say anything the silence of the empty school was shattered by a piercing scream. The Doctor took off running so fast his coat billowed out behind him like wings. Sarah wasn't far behind.

Her legs soon reminded her that she wasn't as young as she'd been when she'd done this every day, but she ignored them. She wasn't letting that man out of her sight.

~o0o~

Rose almost collided with the Doctor as they ran down the corridor from opposite directions. He caught her around the waist to keep them both on their feet. "Was that you screaming?" he asked, checking her for injuries.

"No," she reassured him. "I think it was Mickey. We spilt up so we could search faster."

The reporter woman, Sarah something, skidded to a halt behind the Doctor.

"Hello again," Rose said with a smile. "I was wondering when we'd run into you."

The Doctor rolled his eyes at the terrible joke. "Sarah Jane, you've already met Rose."

"Of course," the older woman said, but her answering smile was slightly brittle. Then she gave a breathless laugh and said to the Doctor, "I can tell you're getting older. Your assistants are getting younger."

Rose bristled. Her youthful appearance had become increasingly annoying since she regained her memories. Being treated like a child when you were twenty was frustrating. Being treated like a child when you were three hundred and twenty was downright infuriating. "I'm not his assistant," she said evenly, "and I'm older than I look."

The Doctor looked from one woman to the other, confused by the sudden drop in temperature.

"Come on," Rose said. "Let's make sure Mickey hasn't been murdered."

They found Mickey in a classroom, a pile of lumpy yellow objects on the floor around him. "Sorry," he said when he saw their fear turn to annoyance as they realized he wasn't in any danger. "I opened this cupboard and all these things fell on top of me."

Rose picked one up and almost dropped it again when she realized what it was. A rat. A dead, vacuum packed rat, its fur dyed a bright, unnatural yellow by the chemicals used to preserve it.

The Doctor was unsympathetic. "So you decided to scream?" he said mockingly. "Like a little girl?"

"It was dark, and I was covered in rats!" Mickey protested, blushing with equal parts anger and embarrassment.

"Doctor," Rose said, interrupting whatever witty retort he'd been preparing. She knew he was just tense because the screaming had made him think she was in danger, but it wasn't fair to take it out on Mickey. She gave him something else to think about. "Don't you think this is a bit odd? Why would they be keeping dead rats in a school?"

"They probably dissect them," Sarah Jane said. "For biology class."

Rose chose to ignore the condescending tone. "No one does that anymore," she said. "They use computer programs and plastic models."

"So what are these for?" the Doctor asked, taking the poor dead creature from Rose and examining it. "Food maybe?"

Rose's stomach turned over at the thought.

"This all started when the new headmaster showed up," he continued, putting the dead rat back in the cupboard. "Let's have a look in his office."

Five minutes later they were running for the exit.


End file.
